Ahhh yes!- all this brings back memories hahaha!...even just sorting out a workflow can take a long time,...and pain- interesting workflow- one I'm not familiar with. It's a LOT worse if you are using large files. Back when I started this caper, I was limited to Photoshop rasters- for producing what were ultimately going to be vectors, but I had no choice,- PS wastheonly prog capable of handling the huge files. The files are not that huge, not what would considered huge these days, but this was way back. I did find an obscure route via PS -> Wintopo Pro and Global Mapper ultimately.My problem was I had to vectorise all those raster contours. WinTopo Pro back then had a one click raster to vector feature. Saved me a lot of time!...but I still had to tag all the vectors with heights....ughgh.
I've never used the metafile, but I was aware of it. Autotrace sounds a lot like the raster to vector thing.

Yep, and you know why it's not very fantasy-ish? Because none of the fantasy map makers of the past ever went to the trouble of building a terrain! They didin't have the tools and in addition it's a bit of a pain in the ass to do it Tolkien did to a certain extent (well to a large extent actually), and those who followed on: Strachey, Fonstad.

monks

monks