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I just use photoshop, as well as a small set of textures for some maps.

Cheers, LT.

Hmmm... let's see. Tools used in mapmaking..

Software: Paint Shop Pro (free trial, known as Painter X by Corel now), Photoshop - CS Lite (free lite version of photoshop, has all the essentials though), GIMP (free), Pov-ray(free), Blender (for creating 3d models, free), Vue D'esprit, Plant Studio (Plugin for Vue, let's me create any type of terrain foliage free)Inkscape (Vector Drawing Program, free), Pixarra Twisted Brush (free & pay painting program, pay editions available with even more features), and CoffeeCup Imagemapper (Free- Slices up an image and create HTML links for on-click web based cartography where clicking on the map brings you to a more detailed map where you can add more maps, text, graphics, illustrations)

Brushes: Watercolor

Markers: Pentel for color, and Pigma Microns starting at .1mm for Black & White... Both these markers use some variety of acid-free archival ink, and I have maps that are almost 20 years old that look as good as the day I drew them.

Pencils: Full set of #1 to #10 Artists pencils, though I'll use your trusty #2 for sketching out an idea

I'm...uh...not sure how to post my maps. I generally use Paint. A few random curvey shapes for continents. Put in forests and deserts using the spray paint tool. Add mountains and rivers. Draw in borders. Big gray circles for cities. Crude, but legible. The key, in my opinion, is making it look real. Put mountains wherever, for the most part, but have rivers flow from mountains to the sea. Put cities near vital passes, bays, or at the intersections of rivers (like Pittsburgh).

For a really crude world map, I make the continents, then immediately divide them up into countries. Fill each country with a different color. Ta-da! Then, later, I can copy separate sections into a new file and blow them up, then fill in detail.

If I want to give the PCs an in-world map, I'll print it, then do two things- crumple it up and unfold it several times, then spill tea on it and leave it to dry. Makes it look nice and old.