Part-1: Creating a Planet
----------------------------------
1. Create a new document 400 by 300 dimension with a white background.
2. Choose the Gradient tool from the options window strip. Choose Radial style and Chrome Preset.
3. Drag the pointer from the upper left corner to the center of the canvas.
4. Use Image--Adjust--Invert ( ctrl+I) to reverse the color. And you have a nice planet with a rich halo!
5. Now play with Edit--Adjust--Hue/Saturation little bit to get a softer color halo effect. I used this settings:
Edit: Blues.
Hue: +180
Saturation: -45
Lightness: -30
5. Let us spice up the atmosphere little bit. Choose a dark brown color, like R94, G80, B76, for the foreground color.
6. Apply Filter--Rander--Clouds. The cloud will completely obliterate the everything else. But Don't panick.
7. Use Edit--Fade and reduce the cloud fill to approximately 27% and you have a nice subtle variation in the luminisity of the halo.
8. Save the file as a psd file. Like planet.psd.
Part-2: Creating a Nebula
----------------------------------
1. Open planet.psd from previous tutorial. Create a new layer. Change foreground color to white, background color to gray blue ( R144, G169, B197). Filter-Render-Cloud. It will again cover the entire image beneath. But don't panick.
2. Change the blending mode for the cloud layer to Soft Light, keep the opacity to 100%.
3. Working on cloud layer, Filter-Distort-Twirl. Set the angle to 950. Click Ok. And here, we have a nice spiral nebula!
4. Make an eliptical selection with the center of the twirl as the center of the selection. Make sure the Father is set to 25 at the tool bar! Select a fair sample of the twirl so that it does look like one.
5. Invert the selection, Select-Invert. And press Delete/Edit-Clear.
6. Deselect everything.
7. Working on cloud layer, use Filter-Distort-Shear to angle the nebula and give it an illusion of distance. In the Shear panel follow the settings in the following image for angle and select the Reapeat Edge Pixels.
8. Change the Blending mode to Hard light, and reduce thn the layer's opacity to 72%. It will make the nebula appear more realistic.
9. Make a layer mask. Layer-Add Layer Mask-Reveal All.
10. Choose the Linear Gradient tool, with Black/White Preset. Drag a gradient from the upper-left of the spiral, through the center, to the lower right corner.
11. Flatten the image. Layer-Flatten. Save as nebula.psd.
Part-3: Creating a Sparkling Stars
----------------------------------
1. Fire up Photoshop. Launch nebula.psd
2. Apply Filter-Render-Lens Flare. Set the brightness 10 141%. And lense type to 35 mm prime. Position the flare on the edge of the planet, so that it seems like a star is shining brightly right behind the planet. You must position the flare on the Lens Flare window. In the main image, there is no way to position it in the desired place.
3. Now invoke some alien space ships. Filter-Render-Lightning Effects. From the preview box choose two lights and eliminate them by pressing Delete. Change the color for each light into some greenish orange by clicking in the white swatch for Light Type to access the color picker. Choose different colors for each light.
4. Increase Ambience in the Lightning Effects dialog box to 53.
5. Use the preview box to angle and position of the lights. Notice that, when you select a light there appears an eclipse with four anchor points in the radius and a color indicator in the center. You can move and change the angles of the lights by dragging the anchors. Follow the next image to get a grip on the settings I used.
6. Now those are alien spaceships heading towards their mother planet or what?
7. Save the file. See the cosmos you just created. Congratulations!
_________________
Dust fills my eyes / Clouds roll by / and I roll with them / Centuries cry / Orders fly / and I fall again
Afford best design, implement best solution. Outsource your web design.
