Hey man
Thanks for the kudos. Yeh I pretty much exclusively used Photoshop for the SW maps pulling a lot of images from www.rpgmapshare.com and www.dundjinni.com using their free items (as well as making a few of my own from time to time) and then putting them altogether into a map. There's no quick way to do them, for me the biggest thing is getting your shadows and light right to make items look like they're actually sitting on the page. There's a variety of different techniques used and I've been using the software for 15 years through Photoshops various versions
If you want to get better than start by making a basic map and follow some of the tutorials on those websites forums, lots of people can give step by step walkthroughs. If there's any aspect in particular from my map you want to know how I did it, then feel free to ask