I didn't realize those effects worked on symbols. I will have to experiment! Love Ricko's idea of using them on Alyssa Faden's clouds.

I have noticed a side effect from mapping with CC3 for a year (your mileage may vary). I have always been interested in cool architecture, but now when I am out and about, I am much more aware of little architectural details. Specifically, I find myself wondering, "What would that look like from a birds-eye view...and what techniques would I use to render that in CC3." 😉

In my opinion, it’s well worth the investment. Fractal Terrains is great, but limited without also having CC3. The community here has been so helpful to me. Lots of experienced mappers ready to give advice. But also: the staff is fantastic. I’ve never used a software product where so many people on staff were so ready, willing, and able to offer support on techniques, not just software bugs. As I understand it, most or all of the folks on staff were end users before moving the company.

On Ralf's 2025 Ancient Realms Revisited tutorial this morning, there was discussion about using the Color Key rivers tool (where a magenta river is placed on the LAND sheet, cutting through the land to reveal the sea below). It was mentioned that the terrain sheets have to go over the land, and that means that you have to draw terrain around the rivers or using the regular rivers fill instead of the cutout.

I tried to do an experiment. On the left, I drew blue rivers over a swampy terrain. Not bad, but you do have to connect it properly to the coast for it to look right. But then on the right, I tried a different approach. I used the Color Key Cutout rivers on the land. Then I drew a swamp over it. Then I added the COLOR KEY effect to the LAND FEATURES (SWAMP) sheet (moving it to be the first effect), and then copied my magenta rivers to that sheet as well.

Both work well but I really like how the river pops in the swamp on the right. Quenten's CC4 wishlist idea in the chat of allowing color cutouts to cut through multiple sheets is a great idea, but in the meantime, copying the cutout to multiple sheets seems to work well.

Sue, as an aside, I really appreciate these style development threads. The first annual I bought in advance was 2024’s. Being a new user at the time, I had planned to wait a few months to see what came out and possibly spend my money instead on stocking up on older annuals. The Sinister Sewers development thread got me invested in it and I subscribed to the annual in December 2023 before anything was released. I imagine these threads are useful for your creative process but as a bonus: they’re good marketing, too!

(I also stocked up on older annuals over the year and now I think there are only three more to get.)