The Dark Empire

[Diamond]

Thanx for the comments and rep, guys. I appreciate it!

[Katto]

Beautiful map!

[Eilathen]

Another Diamond-map (yes, that should be a quality label ). Well done!

[Steel General]

Nicely done Diamond!

[JDCt]

A very beautiful map! Well done!

[Slylok]

Love it! My wife was trying to tell me something while I was observing your map and when she realized I wasn't paying attention to her she looked at the screen and said "Babe, why are you all in to Dranthia?" what could I do but laugh and point out all the superbness that is Dranthia? She agreed and commented that she really liked the color scheme. I am now sleeping on the couch tonight for being more interested in a map than my own wife...J/k lol.

Excellent work Diamond

[Diamond]

My pleasure; anything I can do to sow marital discord...

[Ascension]

I'll make sure that she enjoys her evening nonetheless Superb map, bro.

[arsheesh]

Thanks? I think?

Oh yeah, guess that was a little ambiguous huh? I meant to say, "you never disappoint!"

[CC_JAR]

Trees: simple but time-consuming. I just drew a tree, scanned it, and made a brush out of it. Then I placed every one individually (the time-consuming part ). The layer's set at 50% opacity (trees are black 000000) so they look like they blur out a bit and take on some of the background color.

It wouldn't be as time consuming if you set the brush options to scatter trees, I'm not really sure how to explain it, but in PS CS3 there's a row of buttons vertically beside the mini-pic and layers bar, click the one that looks like brushes in a cup, and click scatter, adjust the sliders to suit your needs..
You may also want to use the marquee (selection box) or better yet, the lasso tool to select your wooded areas and not have trees scattered into the river when you paint.