Today I felt to write a new tutorial. I have just mastered this technique (which I learned myself), and I would like to share it with you. I think it's almost hard not to get a good result using this technique! This tutorial is written so that also beginners would understand it, don't get offended if you're an advanced photoshopper. In this tutorial, you will learn about keyboard shortcuts, layers, layer masks, textures and how to browse DeviantART for resources. Ok folks, this is a small part from a space scene I am building for the moment. The full size of the whole scene will be 1024x2250. The tutorial's planet may not be as good as this one if you don't follow the advanced steps in the last part of the tutorial. I guess you all want to try to make that. Well, shall we? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ~Pro Planet Tutorial~ Step 1: The shape and size Open up a new document in Photoshop. Document size doesn't matter, as you can do planets with a size of 999995x999995 if you would like, but I will use the size 500x500 px here. Make the background black. (Press D to restore the default colours, then press Alt+Backspace.) Once done, create a new layer. (Press CTRL+Shift+N or go via the menu: Layer > New > Layer.) Name the layer "Base". When done, grab the eliptical marquee tool. (Select the first tool in the toolbox, hold down the mousebutton over it to get to a small menu. Select eliptical marquee tool.) Place the mouse pointer in the middle of the canvas, or somewhere you think the middle is. Click and hold the mouse button to get a selection. While holding the mouse button, press Alt and Shift to get a totally round circle from the middle. When you have a size you like, release the mouse button and fill the selection with white. (In this case, you could just press X to switch the colours, so that you have white as your foreground colour. Then press Alt+Backspace again to fill it with white.) If you want you can deselect the layer by pressing CTRL+D. It should look similar to this: http://img286.echo.cx/img286/2449/010ri.jpg Step 2: Adding textures Let's find some nice textures! If you want, you can create your own, but I won't do that here. Go to DeviantART and press the button called "Browse", then add these browser settings: Category: Resources Subcategory: Textures > Miscellaneous Display Mode: Thumbnais; 24 per page (you can choose something else here to make the page load a little faster) Submitted: Any Time; Top Favourites Then click "Apply Browse Settings". Alot textures will now appear. The first one is the most popular on whole DeviantART, the second is the second most popular, and so on, but that's not important to us. We need textures that fits the planet theme. I will use this texture: Temple of everlasting light by `thespook Once you have found a texture that you like, drag it into Photoshop. It will open a new document, so select all (press CTRL+A or go via Select > All), then copy (press CTRL+C or go via Edit > Copy), open up the main document again and CTRL+click on the Base layer (with the white circle) in the Layer window. If you don't have the Layer window open, you can go to it via the Window menu. Now paste the texture into the selection by creating a layer mask. (Press CTRL+Shift+V.) You can now drag the texture around if you want, but it will just appear in the white layer. It should look similar to this: http://img272.echo.cx/img272/7343/024rp.jpg Select the Base layer again (CTRL+click on the layer in the Layer window) and go to Filter > Distort > Spherize and add a sphere at 100%. It should look similar to this: http://img271.echo.cx/img271/3069/032lq.jpg If you're not satisfied with the result of the texture, you can just go pick another one. I will also use this texture: texture 0000000150 by ~temabinastock Repeat the past steps when pasting the texture into your picture. But this time, you could try to play around with the Blending modes or the opacity. Everything you need is in the Layer window. There is a small menu left to the opacity control that says "normal". Try changing it to "Multiply", "Soft Light" or something else to get different results. You can also try to change the opacity. I used opacity 100% and "Soft Light". It should look similar to this: http://img265.echo.cx/img265/7990/042am.jpg Step 3: Shadows and lights It's time to make this look like a planet. Create a new layer, name it "Shading". Select the Base layer again (CTRL+click on the layer in the Layer window). Do not click on the layer without holding down CTRL. Select the marquee tool and move the selection down a bit. You can also try to move it down, and then a bit to the left or right. Sometimes it looks better, and I will do that now. Now fill it with black and then deselect the layer (CTRL+D.) Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. The radius depends on the size of your planet. For this one I used 28,6. Your shadow will be smaller, so make it bigger by transforming it. (Press CTRL+T or go via Edit > Free Transform.) The Alt+Shift technique works here to. It should look similar to this: http://img266.echo.cx/img266/3978/050fm.jpg Time for some glow around the planet. Open up the Bledning options for the Base layer. (Double click on the layer in the Layer window or right click > Blending Options.) Add the following settings: Outer Glow Opacity: 50% Colour: Something that fits the planets colours Spread: 0% Size: Around 20% It should look similar to this: http://img268.echo.cx/img268/2181/063wk.jpg Select the Base layer again (CTRL+click on the layer in the Layer window). Go to Select > Modify > Contract, and contract the selection a bit. I used 6 pixels for my planet. It depends on the size! Go to Select > Feather, and use more than the contract. I used 10 px. Now, invert the selection. (CTRL+Shift+I or go via Select > Invert.) Keep the selection, but click the first texture layer. Do NOT CTRL+click since it will make a new selection. Hit Delete, and then CTRL+D to deselect. It should look similar to this now: http://img279.echo.cx/img279/4599/074mb.jpg Step 4: Changing colours If you're not satisfied with the colours of your planet, you can do this step. If not, your planet is done (if you don't want to continue with the advanced steps). Select the Base layer again (CTRL+click on the layer in the Layer window). Go to Select > Modify > Expand, and expand the selection with around 10 px, or something, so it's bigger than the planet, including the outer glow. You're now about to create a Color Balance layer, and you may wan't to have it on top of everything. Go to Layer > New Adjustment layer > Color Balance, and tweak untill you get something you like. The selection is just so that anything else outside the planet's canvas won't be colorized, so it's acutally not nessecary in this tutorial. It should look similar to this: http://img261.echo.cx/img261/4599/088sb.jpg Of course your planet can have other colours than mine. There, you're done! Advanced steps Please note that these are the advanced steps, and I won't write all the shortcuts here. You can try this steps if you're a beginner too, but if you don't understand, try reading through the tutorial since I may have written something about it earlier, or try other tutorials that cover the things you may not understand (like blending and such). Step 5: Adding more details First of all, you can add another texture on your planet if you want. I will use EX textures 06 by ~stock-feratu Zoom in on your planet and grab the lasso tool. Make a random selection like this: http://img264.echo.cx/img264/8877/099vl.jpg Go get a new texture and paste it into the selection using layer masks. It's up to you how you blend it, but I used the eraser and feathered selections+Delete and Hue/Saturation. Make a selection of the Base layer and go Filter > Distort > Spherize. If it doesn't look good with sphere, just skip it. Be sure that the layers are under the Shadow layer. Do this a couple of times to make it look good. Try different textures and blending modes (I often use Overlay). It should look similar to this: http://img272.echo.cx/img272/8066/106wo.jpg Step 6: Adding a background You might want to add a background too. First of all, we need to delete some of the planets shadow. It won't be seen, but it's nessecary so that the background doesn't get behind it. Go to the Shadow layer but make a selection of the Base layer. Go to Selection > Modify > Expand, and expand the selection to something that's outside the glow. I used 15 px, then 7 px feather, just to be sure. Invert the selection and hit Delete. You will probably see some outer glow on lower part of the planet, but you could just decrease the size and increase the spread of the outer glow. If you do it properly, it will still look good. The Color balance will make the edges of the shadow colorized, so just go to the Color balance layer and delete som parts of it with the eraser. Now grab a star brush. If you don't have any, here are some: http://ti-fi.com/digitalbristle/downloads/..._stardust_2.zip http://ti-fi.com/digitalbristle/downloads/..._stardust_1.zip Create a new layer above the background layer and go wild with the brushes. It should look similar to this: http://img267.echo.cx/img267/9778/114oy.jpg I would say that a colourfull background looks best and is most beautiful, so let's add som colours. Create a new layer above the star layer, set the blending mode to Color, Overlay or Soft Light. Take a standard brush, and take a nice colour (that looks realistic), like blue, and brush over the stars. Lower the opacity for better results. You could also try to multicolour the background. It should look similar to this: http://img286.echo.cx/img286/9038/125bb.jpg You could also add some nebula-looking stuff. Just brush in some colours and lower the opacity. If you want to add some extra spice to it, use some pictures of galaxies. Just google for "galaxy", drag them in, scale them down and blend them. Remember that they have to be behind the other stars since they are further away. And... YOU'RE DONE! This is my result:
wow dude that must have taken a while and its very indepth and useful, great job, i think u deserve +rep for that
this is an awesome tut. i would +rep u but u have been going about posting stuff about how u dont think people are good enough and i was going to -reo u for that. so i wont change ur rep at all
