Dodo

I found some excellent space type tutorials that are quite easy to do - obviously doing the effect well is a whole different story. The creator, Greg Martin, also has some extremely impressive artwork - and the good thing is, he uses mainly Photoshop to do his stuff (from what I read at least). So no plug-ins required to do these!

To make a planet:
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/t..._a_planet.html
To make "space"/a star field:
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/t...tar_field.html

Herewith my little effort:

Dodo

Oh, and if anyone has ideas of how to incorporate landmasses/water into his planet through use of different textures or whatever the case may be, kindly post them.

(MY BAD: This is already covered in the Starfield challenge in the Campfire section of the forum: http://www.photoshopgurus.info/forum...pic.php?t=3430. Sorry about that.)

Blinky2004

No problem Dodo. Been a little while since that thread was used so it's an honest mistake. No biggy either way though. [righton]

Btw... vn image you've made here yourself. :}

ToXin

I get a 404 error when I click on the link so I can't read how that planet was made...

but I did have a dabble in making something that could be used to get a landmass / water texture for it...



very quick but it only took a few steps, with a bit of patience it could be refined to look how you'd want.
The garish colours are so I could se if it worked, I picked bright contrasting ones - not really what I should have chosen but I was trying an idea, not trying to make a realistic looking planet.

Anyway, I thought of using Threshold to get to an organic landmass shape...

ToXin

I started out with a square document, created a new layer opened a layer mask on it.

Running clouds in the layer mask and repeating until I got an interesting distribution, then auto-levelled it to up the contrast.

Then using Threshold on the clouds and playing with the slider to create a black/white 'continents' map.

Loading the layer mask as a selection and filling the selection with with blue in the layer itself, then inverting the selection and filling with green made the 'map'.



The bottom layer makes the planet shape, and a Filter > Distort > Spherise at 100% makes the 'map' more 'realistic'

I just dropped a gradient to see if it would look reasonable with an appropriate shadow added.

Obviously, if more time were taken and a bit of care on colour selection a MUCH better result could be achieved ;\
say adding more variation in the land mass for different terrain etc...

Rantin Al

Toxin, Just a wee addition. It looks like the gradient on the top layer is linear. (?)

If you use a Radial Gradient set to White to Black, and put it in as I have shown below, it will give more roundness to the planet.
Position the start and end to suit the light direction.
Play around with the blending modes and opacity to suit the atmosphere.

Al.

Dodo

Thanks ToXin and Mark (and thanks for the great forum too, while I'm at it [righton] ).

I fixed the link on my intial post - a break code snuck in that messed up the link. Good pointer on the land masses - I'll definitely incorporate that. I think to give it depth (for the water) and texture (for the land), you could use the same method Greg Martin used with the embossing layers - I'm not sure if I'll be able to make work - I'll have to give it a try. Then also some differentiation with some cloud layers?? Heck, that's going to be tricky.

It would be great to see a couple examples - if anyone feels like it .

ToXin

Al you're right, I grabbed the wrong gradient tool ;\

cloud layers should be easy - split the blending sliders

I meddled with my world:



the blending sliders for the cloud layer split :



and the end result having given the gradient a tweak



Still a bit rough, but better

Dodo

Thanks for the great tips ToXin. Didn't know about the threshold setting or the blending sliders on the layers. I'll certainly remember those - \:] on second thought, I'd better make a note somewhere.

But still, I reckon I'll have to give it quite a couple of tries before it starts looking ok.

Hercules

Toxin&Dodo Nice Earth planet you made there!

Toxin Martin link works now.