In this tutorial, we're going to see how we can use textures to create planets and also build an awesome space scene in Photoshop.

Final Image:

STAR FIELD

1. Create a new document (Ctrl+N) in Photoshop. We set ours to a size of 1680px x 1080px, at 72dpi.

2. Fill layer with Black. After that, Create a new layer, fill it black as well, and name it "Stars".

3. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Set Amount to 30%, Distribution to "Gaussian", select "Monochromatic", and hit OK.



4. Now use the Levels (Ctrl+L) to tweak and single out the stars. We dragged our shadows input level slider to 200.



5. Duplicate "Stars" layer. Using the Marquee Tool (M), select a part of the layer and hit Free Transform (Ctrl+T). Hold down the Shift and Alt keys and enlarge it by dragging one corner of the selection to a decent size. Feel free to move and rotate the selection around to make the star placement more diverse, then tap Enter to apply transformation. Once done, change layer mode to "Screen". This adds more stars of different sizes to  the field.

6. Now we're going to space out the stars even more and give it a little more character. Merge both layers and use the Eraser Tool (E) to randomly remove sections of the stars. This part is pretty much experimental, so you can erase the stars in a pattern you like best.

7. With the stamp tool set to "Screen", select parts of the starfield and clone them to make star clusters. To get a desired effect you can experient with different brush sizes.



8. Once you're happy with the outcome, Flatten the image.

NEBULA

1. Create a new layer. Fill it with black and name it "Clouds". Making sure that your foreground and background colors are black and white respectively (D), go to Filter > Render > Clouds.

Set Layer Blending for "Clouds" to "Overlay".


2. Create another layer above "Clouds" and apply a Gradient effect (G). Go to the Gradient editing toolbar. For colors, you can choose whichever you prefer that looks best to you. We chose Violet, Orange.



3. Apply the Gradient at your preferred angle by clicking on a starting point and dragging it to your desired end point.

Set the Layer Blending option to "Overlay".


4. Create a new layer under "Clouds" and grab a soft rounded brush to paint around the canvas and you will see the Nebula slowly taking shape. You can vary the sizes and opacity of the brushes to get a desired effect, heavier opacity brushes making it brighter and lower opacity bruses making it more subtle.

5. If it looks good enough to you, let's move on to the next step - Creating planets for your space scene.

PLANET

Before We start with the planets, make sure you have your texture images ready. Textures are important as they define the planet you are creating, and textures of rocks usually work best. These are the images we will be using:

Image ID: 2026754 ©  Jim Mills 123RF.com

Image ID: 1093341 ©  PaulPaladin 123RF.com.

Alright, let's create some planets!

1. Open the image in photoshop (2026754 ©  Jim Mills) , and go to Edit > Define Pattern and give your pattern a name and click OK.


2. Now go back to your space scene. Create a new layer and name it "Texture". Once you've decided the placement of your planet, use the Elliptical Marquee tool (M) to create a full circle by holding down the shift key as you drag along.



3. Select the Paint Bucket Tool (G). Set the properties to "Pattern" and select the pattern you saved earlier. It should be the last on the list. Now fill your selection with the pattern.



4. If the color of the texture is not the one you want for your planet, you can always hit Ctrl+U to bring up the Hue/Saturation options and adjust the sliders to get the color you prefer. Make sure "Colorize" is selected. For this tutorial, we'll just go with the original color.



5. Go to Filter > Distort > Spherize. We will be doing this step 2 times. Set the amount to 100% and click OK. After that, hit Ctrl+F to apply it another time.



6. We will now create the atmosphere for your planet. Create a new layer above "Texture" and name it "Atmosphere". Ctrl+Click on "Texture" to make a selection of it. Click on "Atmosphere" and fill the selection with black.



7. Double click on "Atmosphere" to bring up the "Layer Style" option. We'll be applying Inner Shadow, Outer Glow and Inner Glow. The settings for this part are completely up to your liking, but best if it's close to the colors of your planet. As a guide, here's ours.



You should end up with something like this.



Set your layer to "screen".



8. Define the textures for your planet by giving it an uneven surface. To do this, first duplicate "Texture". Then go to Filter > Stylize > Emboss. Our settings are 45 degrees for the Angle, a height of 1 px, and amount at 500%. After applying the effect, set the layer blending to "Overlay".

9. Next, we're going to create shadows for your planet. Make a selection of "Texture" by clicking on it, create a new layer above "Atmosphere" and fill it with black. Name it "Shadows". Deselect the selection, and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with an amount of 35%. Click OK.



10. Hit Ctrl+T to bring up Free Transform. What you want to do now, while holding the Shift key, is to enlarge the shadow by dragging the corner opposing the light source. Hit Enter.



11. You will see some "Leftovers" of the shadows. Those are the parts you don't want. To remove them, make a selection of "Texture", and select the "Shadows" layer. Hit Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and paste only parts of the shadows that are within the selection. This automatically creates a new layer for it and will be your new shadow layer. You can delete the "Shadows" layer now.


If you find the shadows too dark and you want more details of your planet, you can always adjust the opacity for the layer. However, always be sure to justify the intensity of the light source to make it look more realistic.


12. Okay that's done. But wait, isn't the outer glow too strong in the shadowed area? Don't worry, we're gonna fix that real quick. Create a new layer under "Atmosphere", select "Atmosphere", and hit Ctrl+E to merge down. Set this layer to "Screen". Rename it "Atmosphere" and make sure the layer is selected.


13. Grab the Eraser Tool (E) with a soft brush setting of about 50% opacity, and gently brush along the edges of the shadowed area of the planet, to make the glow more subtle.



14. Flatten all your planet layers and there you go, a planet is born.



15. Repeating the steps, we created another planet for the scene.

DUST RING

1. Now we'll create a dust ring for your planet. Create a new document at 600px x 600px. And fill it with black, then create a new layer. With your foreground and background colors set to black and white (D) respectively, select Filter > Render > Clouds.



2. Go to Render > Distort > Twirl. Set the Angle to full by dragging the slider all the way to the right.



3. Next, grab the Eraser Tool (E) and circularly remove the sides and center of the image. You should get something that looks like this.



4. After that, hit Ctrl+T to toggle Free Transform and flatten up the ring according to your preference.



5. Just the same like creating the star field, Add some noise to the ring by selecting Filter > Render > Add Noise. Amount set to 8%, distribution to "Gaussion" and select "Monochromatic".



6. Adjust the Levels (Ctrl+L) to make it more prominent.



7. Now drag the ring back into you star field and set its layer to "Screen" removing the black background and place it on a planet.



8. Now use Free Transform to resize and angle the rings according to your preference. Press Enter to apply transformation.



9. After deciding which portion of the ring you want "behind" the planet, Ctrl+click on the planet layer to make selection of it, select the ring layer and start erasing the part away.



10. You can re-color the ring with Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U). Make sure "Colorize" is selected.



11. Deselect the selection and use the Eraser Tool again at 30% Opacity to gently brush over portions of the ring that's in shadowed areas to make it look like it's fading into darkness.

Flatten the image and now your space scene is done. Remember, the settings in this tutorial serve as a guide and are completely subjective, so always try to play around with them to get the effect that looks best and according to your requirements. Have fun!

Final Image:

Credit Pricing

Click below for more amazing high quality tutorials. If you have missed out on the previous months, you might have missed out on some gems!

	123RF November Tutorial #1: Create Custom Shape Brush, Pattern and Wrapping Text Brushes and patterns can be used to make many cool effects. You can customize practically any shapes that you want easily. Once created, it will be saved and stored in your presets, ready to be used in your design.
	123RF November Tutorial #2: Creating a Space Scene In this tutorial, we're going to see how we can use textures to create planets and also build an awesome space scene in Photoshop.
	123RF October Tutorial #1: How to make use of the Background Eraser tool? This tutorial will help refresh our memory as to how one can best extract/merge objects together within the shortest period of time using the Background Eraser tool!
	123RF October Tutorial #2: Photo Montaging – Halloween theme Photo montaging is all about combining a set of photos into one image while applying your creative ideas and graphics along the way to make the end effect more interesting.
	123RF September Tutorial #1: Create Lomography effect using Photoshop In this tutorial, we'll show you how to manipulate your images to make them adopt the effects of Lomographs.
	123RF September Tutorial #2: Mystic Ocean of Sunken Galleon and City Create an underwater seascape using a combination of filters and blend modes.
	123RF August Tutorial #1: Transforming Pictures into Illustration Have you encountered a time where you wish to change a picture into illustration? That's what we are going to show you in this tutorial.
	123RF August Tutorial #2: Frozen and Burnt Face By adding minor details like Iciles and Melting Plastics, we are able to portray an extreme freezing effect on one side, and give a blazing hot effect to the other.
	123RF July Tutorial #1: Creating Glow Effects and Light Streaks Using the blending option, path tool and a little imagination, we'll show you how to add mood to an image by creating stunning glow effects and light streaks.
	123RF July Tutorial #2: Creating a Digital CD Cover Design This is a simple way of creating a CD cover design with digitized background and neon lights text.
	123RF June Tutorial #1: Creating a Glowing Sphere in An Inverted Image Learn how you can create an interesting image by adding in some simple Photoshop effects and by inverting its colors!
	123RF June Tutorial #2: Lens Blur Filter This is an advanced blur filter that simulates a camera's lens blur effect.
	123RF May Tutorial #1: Bringing a Static Car to Life Learn how to manipulate a static car image to become one that looks like it is realistically speeding...
	123RF May Tutorial #2: Free-transforming Rasterized Text to Wrap Around an Object Utilizing a few transform tools such as free transform, object warping, and/or shear tool to create smooth twist-and-turn effects of text that wraps around objects...
	123RF April Tutorial #1: Creating Dynamic Dispersions Travel back to the basic technique of Stamp Tool (S) and Brush Tool (B) to create dynamic and effective particles on the red cloth as shown below...
	123RF April Tutorial #2: Photo Montaging - Blending a Human Head to a Tree This tutorial shows how to montage human heads to a tree and to add in a dramatized effect...
	123RF January Tutorial #2: Creating Smoke-like Effects Create subtle smoke-like effect. Whether you want to add steam, mist or vapor to your photos, you'll definitely be putting this tutorial to good use!
	123RF November Tutorial #1: Storm Effect Transform this cloudy country side picture into a stormy and dramatic evening by adding simple lightning effects

by alex@123rf

Tutorials