Hello I am new to this place and I am here because I want to work on making some maps for my fantasy campaign world. I have been GM'ing on and off in it for long time and now I am about to take over as GM again after a long brake just chilling as a player.
Back in the day when I first made the maps I drew them by hand then after some time I scanned them in and modified them in MS paint but I have never really been satisfied with the result and came here to try and learn how to make cooler maps i.e. something I could be happy with myself.
I have now downloaded GIMP and tryed it with the aid of RobA's tutorial but as I am a complete newbie at it, it hasn't really worked out. I find that with the tecnique in that tutorial I lose the shoreline I want to keep and I have stopped working on it.
I have a continent map that I would love to develop into a full detail map. I dont mind spending many many hours on it but I am not really sure where to start. I would love some help from some more knowledgeable people. I like the style of the maps you get from the RobA tutorial but I have seen many other cool maps here.

I will try and attach the MS paint map I will be working from as a baseline and the map I got from trying the tutorial(I didn't finish it as I could see the shorelines where messed up)uploadmap1.gifuploadmap2.png