Finally have decided how I am going to go about building my campaign world. It'll be a hodge-podge of different styles and tutorials from CG with some ideas of my own. I'll be working in Photoshop CS4, Fractal Mapper 8 and, most likely, GIMP. The oceans and land masses have been done in Fractal Mapper 8. This image shows the entire campaign area:

Silverstaff.png

There will be 60 sections to do in detail. This will be a long work in progress!

Fractal Mapper is the base. This will be where I figure out mountain ranges, long rivers, the main lakes [other than the inland sea] and large tracts of forested land so I can draw a rough sketch on the overall map, so when I split each section off I can get a contiguous/continuous flow to my work.
Photoshop CS 4 will be where I work on the terrain in detail. I will be borrowing ideas from Zaramis' Relatively Realistic Mountains and Pasis' Rising up the mountains in Photoshop tutorials.
Once each section's terrain is done, it will be uploaded back into Fractal Mapper 8 for finishing touches: Cities, towns, keeps, political boundaries, text, etc.

That is the plan. I'm sure I'll get sidetracked trying to figure out problems I cannot even imagine at this stage. But that's the fun right?

Finally, I won't post the individual sections in this post. They will have their own WIP/Map post with their own map, labeled "Name [Silverstaff]". I will link each to this thread however. Feel free to drop C&Cs on me.