If you want to eliminate colour issues around the edges I’d recommend a technique like .
Basically: Create a duplicate later and place it behind the original. Gaussian blur it with a low setting, duplicate it a bunch of times and merge it all down to one blurred layer. Then duplicate the blurred layer, place it behind the original blur, and repeat with a bigger blur setting. Eventually the colours from the edges of the leaf will blur outwards and fill the map. Of course, you can create an action to automate the process and make it less manual. I think XNormal has a plugin that does the same kind of thing, but I haven’t used that.