[Award Winner] Making planets, moons, and suns in Photoshop

[ShrannBeldworf]

There's a few problems with your tutorial. It's missing some pictures. for instance. 4g. "it should look something like this:" there's no picture. It's not a huge deal to me. I've used guides often enough but I'd figure I'd point it out.

Also in your tutorial's you mention:
"At the top of the screen where it says “Select” click there. Select > Color Range = use the black with a fuzziness of 200. Hit the Delete key then deselect."
However I'm using CS4 and I don't have a "black" option. Here's a pic of what I do have.


and this for the drop down options. (Also note the if I select any of the drop down options I can't set a fuzziness. It blanks it out like "range".)



I also have another problem. My results always look different then your's. Here's a comparison picture.

***My Result***


***Tutorial Result - Same step***


As you can see the results are very different, color's aspect. I used the same hex code and everything according to the tutorial (I even analyzed according to the supplied pictures)

[ShrannBeldworf]

Here is what I have after the "Rocky World" part of the tutorial. It doesn't look too bad but I'm still annoyed by the lack of color deviation around the mountainous area's. I followed every part. The only thing I can think of is the "color range" differences. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong there.

*** Look at the area around the white caps <_< ***

Same thing happens with your Atlas Style map tutorial. I don't get that extra color variation detail around the mountainous areas. It's annoying.

Don't get me wrong. I love the tutorial's but that snag is causing some grief.

[ShrannBeldworf]

I think I figured out the problem. There was a step missing. Or maybe it's an extra step with CS4 Users. On Step 4L on the mountains layer set the "Layer Blend" to Hard Light. With that extra step in CS4 you'll get a similar result in the tutorial. check the picture out. It looks almost identical. If you want a steeper look on the mountains just add a second lighting effect. (second picture) Personally in comparison I'd stick with the first picture result.

[Steel General]

Allrighty - that would make sense.

I can reconvert it to a .PDF once you make any needed changes.

[Ascension]

Ok, fixed and re-upped...it was Spherize. Make sure that I saved the doc correctly and didn't just re-up the old one.

[Steel General]

Ok, fixed and re-upped...it was Spherize. Make sure that I saved the doc correctly and didn't just re-up the old one.

Allrighty new version of the .PDF posted. Hope you don't mind but I did a bit of editing. Reduced image sizes, added some spacing between list bullets, emphasized things I felt were important such as commands, etc.

It shrunk the number of pages down to around 18.

[ravells]

I'm amazed this tutorial hasn't reached 5 stars....I'm going to edit the orignal post to add a little encouragement...

[Karro]

I'm amazed this tutorial hasn't reached 5 stars....I'm going to edit the orignal post to add a little encouragement...

Rated (with 5 stars, of course) even though I don't have photoshop! It looks like some of this is portable to GIMP, so that's exciting!

[Steel General]

Rated (with 5 stars, of course) even though I don't have photoshop! It looks like some of this is portable to GIMP, so that's exciting!

Other than the lighting effects, I would think the entire thing should be portable over to GIMP...but don't take that as gospel from me.

@Ascension - Well it seems like I have "spread enuff love" around - so I dub thee newly repped *bonk*

[Ascension]

Thanks guys! I like to spread the knowledge so now we can all make some halfway decent looking planets and not look like noobs I think tonight I'll give a crack at doing one at a larger size and make a few experiments for future edits. As far as the lighting effects filter goes, one could probably get by with selecting by color medium gray to black and just deleting them and apply a bevel/emboss to em. Haven't tried it yet but it's sort of a work-around for Gimp, I'm sure someone more proficient with Gimp could test that.

Steel -- thanks for the edits.