Thanks for taking the time to answer so detailed. It makes sense to me.

I should have phrased my questioned better, but you answered it nonetheless! I wanted to ask "how did you manage to enlarge a particular part of your image that much without losing the detail". But since I was at work earlier, I had the time to read through this post more carefully and thus had already kind of figured out how you did it, apart from the shrinking bit.

I'm working in photoshop, and as you mentioned above, when I copy a part out of my original worldmap and fit it to the size I want it, it gets blurry. At least it's still roughly the original shape. So no way around redoing the coastlines, then. Ah well, can be fun, right?

So, thanks again and keep up the inspiring work!