For many years I've used Illustrator almost exclusively for all my mapping, and the vast majority has been hex maps. I bought Manifold for its georegistration and projection features, but aside from that I didn't even go to Photoshop for anything. I was always planning to move beyond the hex maps for world maps, but the nature of my project meant that I never got to that stage.

However, recently I have decided to expand my skill set for a new project I'm working on, and I've been exploring raster software, and especially software that lets me work with height maps. So far I've primarily been using Photoshop and Wilbur, with Manifold and G.Projector for reprojection, and Illustrator for vector work (mostly coastlines and graticules). I'm planning on involving Fractal Terrains 3 at some point, though so far I prefer Wilbur for its high resolution capabilities as well as being able to work on a world split into smaller parts.

It seems I may be in the minority here at the Guild for my love of GIS and hyper-realism in my fantasy mapping. It would certainly be easier if I didn't worry about such things, but I just can't help it. As a result, the programs I would most love to have are MAPublisher and Geographic Imager, which enable GIS-type features in Illustrator and Photoshop respectively. This would also allow me to ditch Manifold, which does the job, albeit in a roundabout way.

Finally to round things out I sometimes use InDesign for presentation, mostly for making PDFs when text or images are involved and Illustrator is not quite up to the job.