Planet Tutorial - By Tim Barton

Planet tutorial

Here are a few examples of this put to work:

End Result:

Tutorial5

Requirements:

Photoshop CS
Other versions may be slightly different but You're smart, you can figure it out.

Brushes:

Basic Photoshop Brushes

Getting Started:

Make a new document in photoshop. Any size is good but I'm going to make a 500x200 image. Fill the background with black. Then make a new layer [shift+ctrl+N]. Hopefully it'll look like this:

Tutorial1
Exciting, I know.

With that new layer highlighted select your brush tool [B] and find a HARD edged ROUND brush. Turn the fill and opacity to 100% and the size of the brush to around 5-30 pixels.

Most of these settings should be found on the options toolbar at the top.

Now, change your foreground color (that top color box that should be on the left of your screen) to WHITE.

Splat some of those white circles down on your picture, varrying the sizes to your liking. Make about 6, all with different sizes.

Tutorial2

Yay, we have round dots, congradulations!
Now, right above that layer in the "layers" pallate you should see the words "Lock:" Then a few pretty little buttons to the right, click "lock transparent pixels" button, it should be a white and grey checker board.
This will make sure you're next step wont bleed off of the white circle you've already defined.

Next step is to change your brush color to Black, change the brush HARDNESS to about 72%. Then, on that top layer paint the dark side of the planets. Rather hard to explain in writing so just look at this picture:

Tutorial3

For the easiness of this tutorial were going to make our light source behind our planets off screen to the north. Its just easier this way...

Yay, we have our planet shapes. (hopefully)
Its time to make them pretty.
Lets add some COLOR! sweet!

Cheap but nice looking coloring method:

Basically all were going to do for coloring is to add a COLOR BALANCE layer over this thing.

Go to Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Color Balance

In the window that comes up theres 3 radio buttons that are labed as "Shadows", "Midtones", and "Highlights". Remember the secret to making sweet looking colors is to make the highlights a different color than the Shadows, and have the midtones a mix between them.
Example: Red Shadows, Orange Midtones, Yellow Highlights
Or Blue Shadows, Skyblue Midtones, Cyan Highlights.

Use the sliders to replace certain colors with other colors. Such as replacing yellow with blue or magenta with Green. Hopefully you'll experiment with this some and get used to it. ........Yeah right who am I kidding? Heres what I used.

Preserve Luminosity UNCHECKED.
Shadows: -42 | 0 | +34
Midtones: -19 | +1 | +32
Highlights: -38 | +10 | +43

(WOW, photoshop just crashed on me, how convenient...)

With a little luck and the abuility to follow instructions you should have some simple planets on your picture.

Tutorial4

Now... What else can we add?

Hmmm, how about some lights on the dark side of that planet, some stars and some yummy blue background stuff...

Woosh, Dont ya just hate it when your tutorial maker suddenly ends up with an amazing picture out of no where?! Hate me, Love me, whatever.

Tutorial5

If you're wondering, I painted everything else with photoshop basic brushes, no filters were used in the production of this graphic!

Tutorial by Tim Barton ArtOfTimBarton.com for other sweet stuff

Email: timmythepowderedmilkman@yahoo.com If you have any questions. (I love random emails)