Excellent software for mapmakers

[Frostmourne27]

Previously I had looked at using Age of Wonders, but piecing all of the screen shots together is too tedious for me.

But you can zoom out in Age of Wonders... Or can you not zoom out far enough?
BTW: I think gandalf's right, no matter how good our pictures are, the maps are only as good as their .map files are. I know almost nothing about the sort of scripting that would be needed, and am just wondering, how easy would it be to do a script to make .map files. Could you maybe have it generate areas based on sudden colour fluctuations? Since water is usaully blue, and grass green, that might work most of the time wouldn't it? Then put a white pizel in center of each area? Something like that would make .map file generation much easier, since it would just be special sites, scenario stuffs, and the odd problem fix.