| |
|
Making your own Planet
|
Creating a Planet:
|
|
1.
With Photoshop, we have the
god-like ability to create planets. Nothing will
inflate your ego more than creating whole worlds in a few minutes. I'll show you how.
|
 |
2.
I started out with a 7" x 7", 200 ppi file (the size and resolution you choose will , of course, depend upon your needs). Next, I filled the area with a texture I had created and turned into an Action, for quick re-use anytime.
If you have 6.0, you can download the action from Team Photoshop. It's called Burgundy/Violet Spray and it's in the bundle of texture actions called teamactions1.atn. If you don't use 6.0, create any texture using a combination of filters and color adjustments. This one uses Clouds, Photocopy, Ripple, Bas Relief, Grain, & Hue/Saturation, among other adjustments.
To the right you see a miniature version of my file and a magnified shot showing the detail. The texture I'm using is somewhat arbitrary. I used the techniques which follow on a number of textures do create different looking planets. |
|
|
|
 |
3.
Next I applied another
action I had created. I wanted to create the look of
moisture in the atmosphere, like clouds. The action
is called Steam Bath and it's in the bundle of image effect actions called teamactions10.atn if you'd like to download it and run it with a click of the play button on the Actions Palette. This one's a lot easier to recreate if you don't have 6.0. To get this foggy effect, just create a new layer above your texture. Reset the swatches and choose Filter: Render: Clouds. Set the Layer Blending Mode to Screen. That's it. You can see how it looks in my Layers Palette to the left.
Below that, what I've done is taken my large image and used Edit: Transform: Scale to shrink the texture down into a much smaller area. I want the planet to have a lot of small detail. Now the file is about a 1.5 inch square. |
|
4.
Gravity may allow slightly
elliptical spheres, but no cubes, so it's time to
make our world round. I used the elliptical marquee
tool  (with the Shift key held down) to draw a circle, then chose Select: Inverse, and hit the delete key.
Now, how do I make this 2-D disc look more 3-D, or spherical? The 3-D Transform Filter? The Liquify command? Those are both good guesses, but not what I used below. |
  |
5.
The Spherize Filter,
applied repeatedly, worked best. Choose Filter: Distort: Spherize, and you'll see something like what I did to the left. It worked best when I had first loaded a selection of the circular texture I made.
Notice I cranked up the distortion level to 100%. Even after that, I applied the filter a second (and for some textures, a third) time before I had the spherical effect that I wanted. See the results to the left below. |
  |
6.
Of course eventually, when
I've given birth to enough planets, I'll put them
all together in an outer-space scene. So it pays to
see what my orb looks like against a dark
background.
It's pretty good, but there's a couple of things to be done yet. We've got to blend it's edges into the background more. Right now it stands out way to much, and that looks fake.
The second problem, and the one I have to take care of first, is the lack of shadow on the surface. A gradual change from dark to light is going to help the illusion of three dimensional space. It also establishes a light source (a nearby sun/star). Unless the source of light is precisely the same as our point of view, we'll see some shadow on the "night-side" of this planet. I loaded a selection of the circle and, on a new layer, used the radial gradient tool  to create the blend from black to transparent you see to the left. |
  |
7.
After I'm happy with the
gradient, I merged the two layers together and now
it's time to take care of the sharp edge. I loaded a
selection of the planet and chose Select: Modify: Border. The size of the border will depend on your image; I chose four pixels. Then I feathered it another 3 pixels. Next I chose Filter: Blur: Gaussian Blur and blurred the edge until it blended in with its background convincingly.
Another option for this technique would have been to load a selection of the planet, feather it, then select inverse. Create a layer mask, then fill with black. It will get similar results without actually blurring the pixels of the image. |
|
8.
At last. A world I can call
my own!
I'll name it "Adobia." |
  |
9.
Using different textures
and color adjustments, I made many variations for my
outer space-scape. Here's a couple of others. The
one on the bottom looks quite moon-like, don't you
think?
|
|
|
|
If you have any questions or comments regarding this tutorial please post it in this thread
http://forum.teamphotoshop.com/showthread.php?t=24704
Print Article
|
|
Login / Register
From The Forums...
|
|
info: photoshop pdf tip
hi,
well i am glad the board is back and i hope ...
|
360 Imaging Anyone?
...
|
360 Imaging Anyone?
I don't but I am starting to look into it...
|
Streetdance Movie
Sparks as fly as the worlds of street-dance and ba...
|
Creating the Best Webdesign Photoshop Workflow
Hello , I'm a webdesigner and just read [URL="htt...
|
|
... Go to Forum
|
|
Stamp out unwanted data using the rubber stamp tool.
Tutorial covers removing part of an image using the rubber stamp tool....
|
|
Blending edges when you are making a composite photo.
Tutorial covering blending edges...
|
|
