Help with Wilbur/Gimp

[Nightshade]

Ok, so I love Wilbur, absolutely love it. It is great for helping to flesh out a concept for a new map. The issue I am running into is how to make it work with a map with preconceived terrain, such as one where the hills go there, a mountain range goes here, and so forth. I've tried a couple different ways, and I cannot seem to get the hang of it. It SEEMS like I should be able to flesh out the basic terrain, then use the add noise function to layer fractal noise on top to give the irregularity to the rest of the terrain, but the results are.... not as I expected. I've tried generating the terrain first, then trying to add the mountains in on top, either with the paint tool, or the select tool, and when importing the grey scale into GIMP major oddities come up when trying to bump map it such as regular circles or "steps", and it seems that frequently when I try to use the select tool to try and alter something, it lowers the terrain of the REST of the map instead of just raising what I am working on. My appologies if none of this makes any sense, I have been beating my head against a wall for months on this concept, have scoured the forums and picked up a lot of other neat tricks along the way. As an aside, it would be really awesome to know if someone has compiled a resource on the functions and tips that are scattered around this site, as a lot of the functions in Wilbur go right over my head, being perfectly honest there.
SO having taken a long way to get around to the point. What would be the best way to use GIMP and Wilbur to be able to both generate a basic fractal terrain AND have mountains and hills where I want them, while keeping the continuity between the two so that a bump map doesn't pick up anything strange? I'm sure it has something to do with moving back and forth between the two, and possibly generating multiple separate images in Wilbur. I hope I'm on the right track there. I just can't seem to get the results I want. So, hopefully someone out there already knows what they are doing and can help.

[waldronate]

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=29412 may be of some use for the Wilbur end of things, especially the CSU Johnsondale tutorial (its original thread is at http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=18120 if you'd like to see the context). http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=28052 might also be of interest.

[Nightshade]

A response from the highest authority =) I have seen some of those threads, as well as the tutorials on the new site. Had not seen the last one you posted, so I will definitely look it over to see if my answer lies there. Thank you for replying! I probably will be coming back with more questions however. One of these days I'm going to have to try out fractal terrains.... I did download the trial, but then ended up not having the time to try it out before the trial ended.... and there was SO much to learn in it haha