Yes.

There is a half way measure you can use, but it only lasts the session and may have unexpected results. You can switch off the redrawing of the symbols by typing DELAYDRAWSYM, and changing the value in the command bar to 0 (zero) from 1.

As you can see, it works to chop the top off this Mike Schley mountain, but look at the foot of the mountain - the semitransparent pixels in the symbol have been turned fully transparent.

Before:

After:

It all depends on whether you have semi-transparent pixels in any of the symbols in your map.

Color key doesn't generally work on symbols because of the way symbols are drawn twice by the rendering engine.

The only exception to this rule are 'mapped' city symbols (building roofs that shade themselves according to the position of the global sun), which are only drawn once to preserve the roof shading.

You can copy the png file for the symbol and delete the parts you don't want in the new copy in a bitmap editor, then use your modified copies instead, but be careful to remember they are modified symbols and shouldn't be gifted to anyone else. Using them in your own maps for all the usual purposes, including commercial sale of the map, is fine.

There is really only one big drawback when making your own versions of the public set, and that is if you share your FCW file with others they will only see red X's where they don't have the necessary artwork.

The template has a Color Key sheet effect on the WATER sheet, so if you draw an ocean that covers the map, and then move your land shape to the WATER sheet and use Change Properties to change the fill of that land to Solid and colour 6 (magenta), the land shape will cut a hole through the water to your land.

I drew one here for you, using the Sea, Island drawing tool (which does the same thing)

Then hit refresh (CTRL+R) to see the result.

Ralf's demonstration of the style may help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE6L4_KjBc8

The Herwin Wielink colour palette on your map isn't really helping you, with only a single row of relatively dull blues to use, so here it is again with a more balanced colour palette attached to it - to give you more choice with your labels (and only if you want it with this modification).

Hi Brian! :)

The most important thing to remember with lables is contrast. If you turned your map black and white the map itself would be all shades of grey, ranging from a very dark grey to a very pale one. To make text stand out from it chose either a very pale label colour with a very dark glow, or a very dark colour with a very pale glow. The kill-all solution is to use the palest and darkest shades of grey - one for the text and the other for the glow.

Drop shadows don't generally work very well for readability, but can look good on a title sometimes.

Your labels are pretty much mid-tone, which is the most difficult colour to make stand out, even when you intensify the native white glow.

I recommend picking lighter or darker labels, and maybe using an Outer Glow instead of the slightly less tidy Glow, like this.

Or like this.

You could use both on two TEXT sheets - one way for the title and the other way around for the map labels.