Posted on January 14, 2012 by
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Photoshop Space Tutorial

Additional Planet

Things are looking good, but the scene is still looking bland. Let’s add an additional planet!

On a new layer above your clouds layers, draw out a perfect circle with your Ellipse Tool.

DarkCircle Photoshop Space Tutorial

When that circle is created, make a duplicate of that layer. You should have two identical dark circles.

DuplicatedCircles Photoshop Space Tutorial

On the top circle, we need to apply a few Layer Styles, similar to those that we applied to our large planet. They can be seem below.

InnerGlow Photoshop Space Tutorial

InnerShadow Photoshop Space Tutorial

OuterGlow1 Photoshop Space Tutorial

Your smaller planet should be looking like this:

SmallStyles Photoshop Space Tutorial

Just like we did with the larger planet, we need to apply a texture to our planet. I’m going to use this texture. Bring this texture into Photoshop and place/scale it on top of your smaller planet.

TexturePlaced Photoshop Space Tutorial

Follow the same steps we performed on the large planet:

- Command/CTRL + Click on the small planet layer to create a selection.
- Add a Spherize Filter – Filter > Distort > Spherize. Use 100% for the amount.
- Apply a Layer Mask to hide the excess bits. Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection.
- Change the Blend Mode of the texture to Overlay.

OverlayPlanet Photoshop Space Tutorial

We now need to mask out the top right side of the planet, in order to give an ‘eclipse’ effect. In your Layers Panel, select both the texture layer and the top circle. You can do this by selecting one of the layers, then with your Command/CTRL key held down, click on a BLANK area of the second layer.

SelectedLayers Photoshop Space Tutorial

Once both layers are selected, we need to place them in a Group. At the bottom of your Layers Panel, with your Shift key held down click on the Create New Group icon (newgroup Photoshop Space Tutorial). This will place the selected layers inside a new Group.

Grouped Photoshop Space Tutorial

Once they are grouped, apply a Layer Mask to your new group. Either use the Layer Mask icon on your Layers Panel, or Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All.

LayerMaskGroup Photoshop Space Tutorial

Now, with a soft black brush, around 400px, click a few times at the top right corner of the small planet. This will hide the texture and the Layer Styles, revealing the second black circle below.

SmallPlanet Photoshop Space Tutorial

Using the same method, you can create as many additional planets as you choose! Here’s my final image.

FinalSpace Photoshop Space Tutorial

 

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