Photoshop - Planets and Realistic Universe

Photoshop -Planets

Completed on 12-Jul-2012

There were actually 3 versions of this work, and 1 simplified version.

The simplified version is a sample from a book, and I made a new work with more details based on the tutorial on Create a Realistic Space Scene from Scratch with Photoshop. There are several different approaches, and I found the best is still the version of tutorial.

Well, let me show you my different approaches to create my universe.

Below is the sample from the book. I completed it in less than 15 mins.

Source: Photoshop絕對出色影像處理與視覺設計表現
ISBN:  9789862762622

Completed on 11-Jul-2012

I used this sample to practice the following Photoshop skills:

1. Using Alpha to keep the selection area, in order to make the reflection on the planet.
2. Using filter to make the make the star dust in the background. It's subtle, can you see it?
3. Using Alpha to make the light green and light blue halo of the stars.

After this practice, I felt it's not enough, so I tried to make something more realistic.

Below is my first approach towards the realistic universe.

Completed on 11-Jul-2012

I used the following skills to re-do the previous work:

1. Using Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur to make thousands of  stars in the background. Close to the monitor, can you see it?
2. With Inner Glow and Outer Glow , I made the planets illuminated with bluish glow.
3. Filter/Distort/Spherize for the planets. 
4. Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur for the show of the big planet. The gradient of the shadow became more natural.
5. Using Lasso to draw a star on the left top of the big planet, filled with white colour, then called Radio and  Gaussian Blur to turn the star into the light source.
6. Add a lens flare filter.

Well, it looked better then before, but the shadow of the small planet is really annoying. So I removed it. The result looked like this:

Completed on 11-Jul-2012

Better, isn't it? But the star dust was too shinny, so I gave it another try:

Completed on 12-Jul-2012

I replaced the star dust with another galaxy texture, and reshaped the show of the small planet. And it's the final result.

I'm new to Photoshop, and it was a really good experience to make a realistic scene from scratch!

In the end, let us compare the 3 different versions!