Software to draw maps based on Earth I am looking for a tool to sketch changes to Earth. It should start with a geoid or an Earth model, rise/lower/flood selected areas. "Heal" boardersk: if an island is added in an ocean height shouldn't abruptly change from 0 $m$ to $-$1000 $m$. It should also measure distances between points, allow labeling and export maps of selected images as raster graphics (jpg image). 

So far I could do two things:  


Start with Google Earth, prepare necessary shapes using flooding, paste results as layers in Gimp/Photoshop [fast and ugly]
Import data in Matlab, define rules for modified regions, export [manual rule definitions is slow, no way to smart select, drag and drop regions] 


What is the standard approach to do this? For instance, how people display flood plains, draft a channel or a new island project?



Windows/Mac/Linux/doesn't_matter? Windows preferred, Linux is OK. 
GUI or also command line? GUI, or GUI+CLI batching. CLI only is undesired.
Go you want to use a GIS? I didn't know about GIS. Looking into in.
The most common software for creating and modifying maps is ArcGIS (commercial but you can get free trial for a month) or QGIS (open source).