New wannabe cartographer, first map

[Steel General]

Try Ascensions suggestion of the inner glow or if you like the outline/stroke, choose a color that's some kind of mid-point between the ocean and the land.

[nils.de.reus]

That last version was with a black, 10 pixel inner glow, but I think I botched it

My guess is that the transition to forest is too dark and too close to the shoreline, making the glow on the lowland barely noticeable because there only rarely are enough pixels of lowland to appreciate the effect.

[Nomadic]

Very nice first map. If the mountains are still a separate layer I might suggest adding a very light bit of noise. That will make them appear less blurry (not much, just enough to sharpen them up).

[nils.de.reus]

or if you like the outline/stroke, choose a color that's some kind of mid-point between the ocean and the land.

Hey, that worked - I changed the stroke color to one closer to the lowland color, and the result came out looking pretty good to me.

If the mountains are still a separate layer I might suggest adding a very light bit of noise. That will make them appear less blurry

Oops. The mountain layer was not supposed to be that blurry, but I had the layer opacity set to 50% from an earlier stage Fixed that now.