The Open Source option. I give in.

[cabbs]

No, not at mapping altogether.

But mapping without photoshop.

I have tried numerous picture editors, GIMP, paint.net, Fireworks (*cough*), and all have been unsuitable for my needs (for instance, crashing, seeing anything above "6000 x 6000" and collapsing into a pile of gory limbs, taking a minute to move anything any distance).
GIMP came closest, but I cannot tile in it for love nor money, or do anything as easily as I could in PS E at college. The open-source option Does Not Like Me.

(note: I am well aware that the above may be result of own short attention span or only having 1 GB of ram.)

As I type, the download for (trial) Photoshop Elements 4.0 hits 42%, only Elements as I am not going to learn normal photoshop for 30 days and then have to leave it without the remotest chance of paying for it.

So, what does everyone else use? and how easily do the photoshops handle silly sized pictures?

And no semi-legal downloads

[FoeOfTheBee]

Although I'm not a mapper,
http://www.cinepaint.org/
might be worth checking out.

[pheldens]

In gimp check and optimize the settings under file/preferences/Environment for large files.

[Erom]

Could you go into more detail? I personally use GIMP for everything, but it's terrible at large files, which maps of repectable size require.

Also, to the OP, worse comes to worse the new map format won't require such large image files.

[cabbs]

Ok, im trying to make a few simple greenfields-alike variations for a second map/s, so it is basically going to be a big repeated texture, 16 x 16. My first map was Metalwall, which was all I could manage with gimp, the texture of which consisted entirely of a poorly tiled 64x squares. (kill me? you'll have to find me first).

In gimp, it takes a good while to create the 8192 x 8192 blank picture, and at least 10 seconds to move anything around in it when its more than half full. And because GIMP cant tile effectively (much / at all), im moving large chunks of texture around (1024 x 6000 +), which takes at least 20 seconds or so. Its a testament to the devs that I can only remember it crashing once.

Now, Photoshop creates the file in 3 seconds, fills the entire pic in 2, and moves anything instantly. only slightly slow bit is when I minimise it. I might actually pay for this thing.

[Forboding Angel]

L3dt

It's free for like 3 months and to buy it's only 25 bucks and besides bryce 3d, it's the only thing I ever use.

You can use mosaic tiling which uses hardly any memory.

[pheldens]

I have ~900MB system ram.
3 seconds creation with gimp here for 8192x8192 (512MB)
editting indeed is slow, but it's mostly a memory issue, as indicated in the lower middle. (it grows to 8xx, and the machine starts swapping)

[SinbadEV]

http://mapeditor.org/

if you are just trying to make a big ass tiled texture out of smaller sub-textures this program let's you do so... make sure you check the docs to find out how to increase the size of the memory buffer it uses, otherwise the program crashes when you go to export the map as an image.