So I've been working on a map in photoshop. Roughly the size of europe, a continent, and it's pretty good. I'm using Jezelf's technique (His tutorials were and are my cartography bible) and some others I've learned as well as some of my own. In any cas,e I've run into an issue.

My quick and easy forestry technique basically consists of a dark green soft fall off brush on a layer of around 50% opacity just under the height map (3d mapping) which is dotted on and then given a huge dose of Gaussian Blur and it generally looks good aside from some distressing ocassions where it looks too artificial no matter what I do. Basically I'm wondering if there's any way to make transitions between areas wider, without using the Gaussian Blur, which, while a very useful tool, isn't always effective.

Also, what bothers me as well is mountaintops, winter forests and plains. I use the same technique for forests to give mountaintops snow, but I obviously can't paint by dragging, because that looks immediately artificial, no matter how much you blur it. As for forests, I think using a scattered, very small brush would work (haven't tried that out yet) but I'm looking for other ideas as well. Finally, as to plains, they just seem too barren in some occasions. I'd like to be able to somehow denote the areas around cities and farms without losing my huge scale (Again, the map is roughly the size of a continent)

Thanks in advance

Nepty