A cheery wave to all...

I am perched on a shakey fence about software. I am just starting off and wanted to get a few things straight at the beginning so I don't buy software and spend 3 months playing with it before finding out it can't do 'what I want'. Well what do you want do you ask? I have been playing with GIMP and I think it is nifty. But I find the learning curve frustrating. Moral would increase if I could get right into map making and gradually work in other software to tweak things I have made. Being new this presents some possible unforeseeable issues. I don't mind shelling out a bit of dough so I have looked at CC3, Other World Mapper and Wonderdraft so far.

How would you evaluate their compatibility with other software? Any comments regarding opinions are also welcome. Am I right?-

CC3 is purely vector based. So you can't export maps back and forth to other programs (even other vector based programs). But you can import graphics into CC3. CC3 has years of addition (pricey) material to work with.

OWM is a combination of raster and vector based systems. I want to say you can import/export the maps into other raster editors but I am not sure what that would look like. I have no opinion of OWM except that the colors look a bit funny to me. Like maybe a blending thing, hence the additional software.

Wonderdraft is a a raster based program so it seems like it is similarly flexible (and a ridiculously intuitive program from the tutorials). But it doesn't seem to be an especially capable program. If you use the program a lot you better really like the style of map.

As a side note: I am also purchasing a tablet soon. Maybe XP Pen... But that is a discussion for a different thread.