This tutorial is just beyond outstanding. It was quite literally EXACTLY what I was looking for. See, I'm a Linux user, and as such, the most readily available image software is GIMP. However, I never had a moment's thought that I might find a tutorial this thorough, SPECIFICALLY for the GIMP. I'm blown away.

A huge "Thank you!" (and some rep) goes out to RobA for taking the time to make this extraordinary guide.

Not only is it going to be a godsend for my map making, but it has taught me a lot about using GIMP that I'm sure I can apply to other tasks.

Now, I got a chance to play around with these techniques this evening, and I must say, the results are very satisfactory. I'm still just practicing, so I haven't done any editing on my current map project, but I've gotten the hang of it and even added my own technique.

I made a mountain range and decided I wanted snow caps on the tallest peaks. So I made a new layer by copying the uncolored/greyscale mountain range (let's call it "Snow"). I then used the magic wand with a very high tolerance and clicked in the dark "non mountainous area", so everything but the lightest colors were selected. I inverted the selection, created a new layer, saved the selection to a channel and created a mask. I then applied that mask to the "Snow" layer", reduced the opacity to about 90% and this was the result:

NOTE: when I made this, I had no internet connection and was doing this from memory and I couldn't remember how to do the heightfield.

practice.jpg