[Award Winner] My atlas style in PS

[Malverno]

Hello everyone, this is my first post in the Guild!

I have been working on a couple of Maps following this amazing tutorial (well, the GIMP version by Gedde of it at least) and this is my latest Work In Progress. I am quite proud of it and can't wait to get on with the next steps (rivers, borders, roads and naming), but I have ended up being stuck for a few issues.

Map.png

I apologise if I ask any silly question or anything already asked before, but it is kind of hard/not very user friendly (at least to me) navigating this forum and this specific thread, and on top of that I am a basic user when it comes to image editing programs. Still, I am amazed at how much I could learn and the result I could produce thanks to this fantastic tutorial!

On with my issues, to which I would appreciate if anyone can help me with:

1) There is no clear explanation on lakes. How should I go about them, or what can I refer to if there is a separate guide? The original tutorial by Ascension has also lakes included, but the GIMP process leaves them out.
Should I draw them like I draw the rivers and borders, or is there anything that takes into account the "height map" in the Ocean Layer and automatically can map lakes in the areas of depression?

2) I am absolutely not satisfied with my mountains. I am fairly sure I followed the process religiously until now, but the mountains do not look as "sharp", but rather grainy. And the snowcaps are not really around. You can see a closeup below.
Am I doing anything wrong? Maybe I am using an outdated version of the tutorial? Is there a separate guide for mountains somewhere else?
Also, I would like to add a few mountains, but there is only mention of deleting them in the tutorial.
I do not mind redoing the whole mountains/hills/snowcaps etc process again.

MapCloseup.png

[Wil]

I'm following them to the letter, but when I get to step 1l (removing the Noise, Clip and Coastline layers) I am left only black sea which doesn't match the screenshots.

Does anyone know what order the noise, clip and coastline layers should be in? My guess from the tutorial is that they are in that order. I'm using GIMP 2.8 BTW.

It also might be relevant that I already have a coastline, so I am using the selection of that outline to limit the area I am painting for the land clouds.