Hey everyone,
The first thing I have to say is that I am absolutely blown away by the skill of members here. A lot of the maps I have thus far viewed are mind boggling.
As for me, I have been a Writer for a very long time so have finally decided that producing some good maps would help me bring some of the worlds i have created (in my head) come to life. My present form of map creation involves using colored markers for various terrain features on whatever pieces of paper I can find. These 'maps' are the equivalent of what my attempt at drawing is like: you can produce the Madonna, I produce the stick-figure equivalent.
At any rate, I am starting to become a little more familiar with CS5 (Layering is quite useful for just about everything!) though am by no means 'fluent' with CS5. I also grabbed a copy of the ProFantasy Software mentioned on this site (at the least CC3) as it looks quite good itself. I have no idea how to use it though and shall most likely be spending most of my time doing the tutorials found on this site.
-Silvestine