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

[Ascension]

Hey, looks pretty good. Glad to see you were to able to adapt this and be flexible with it.

[nolgroth]

Okay, after toying around with this whole thing, I've come up with some methods for using Photoshop Elements 2 to emulate your style as much as possible. I still have not successfully tested it on the Earthlike planet or Star types yet, but it works pretty well for the Rocky Planet/Moon type.

Selecting Color Range is not supported in Elements 2. To emulate that effect, I created a Threshold layer above the Hills and Mountain layers.

Mountain Layer
Click on the Threshold layer. Use the Magic Wand tool at a Threshold of about 175. You can play with that number as you like. Use the Magic Wand tool to select the white portions in the Threshold layer. Click over to the Mountains layer and hit Delete. Then Deselect (CTRL+D or through the menu). Drag the Threshold layer to the trash.

Hills Layer
Same basic concepts as Mountain Layer. All I did was change the Threshold setting on the Magic Wand to about 125.

Since Color Overlays are also not supported, the closest I could come was to create a Solid Color layer over each; Land, Hills, and Mountains. I used the brown color you described in your tutorial. I then set the Layer Mode to Overlay and then linked each set and merged the linked layers. That is a separate action for the Mountain, Hills and Land layers.

Layer Effects are present but very limited. I was not able to set any options for them and so the shadows on the mountains layer turned the "mountains" into craters and canyons.

I can get into more detail if anybody needs. Mostly I am just describing how to alter your tutorial for the purpose of using Elements 2. Not even sure how many people even use it. Looking on the web, Elements 3 (and presumably later) have Select Color Range built in.

I've attached an image of a moon that I built entirely in Elements 2. I could have easily attached an atmosphere, but I wanted to test the basic concepts first. Besides, I need a good moon image for another project. I think you will see that it is closer in concept to your examples than my first effort.

Again, thanks for the wonderful tutorial. It has been very engaging trying to adapt it to the tools that I have. Later today I am going to try the Earthlike planet and see where I can get with it.

[Ascension]

Post up the shot of that one too, I'd like to see it.

[nolgroth]

Post up the shot of that one too, I'd like to see it.

Will do. In the meantime, any idea what Hard Mix does as a Layer Mode? I will probably need to add a few steps to simulate the process, but I need to know what it does exactly.

[Ascension]

I have no idea of what the theory is to it or the math underlaying it but the result is something like the posterize filter...it makes something like a 6 color image (black, white. red, green, blue, and yellow depending on the colors underneath) all very bright and in a camouflage sort of pattern. I only use it on grayscale clouds to create a cow spot pattern. On these gray clouds it sort of equalizes everything so that the result is black and white instead of grayscale. This could probably be done with levels, curves, and threshold.

[nolgroth]

I have no idea of what the theory is to it or the math underlaying it but the result is something like the posterize filter...it makes something like a 6 color image (black, white. red, green, blue, and yellow depending on the colors underneath) all very bright and in a camouflage sort of pattern. I only use it on grayscale clouds to create a cow spot pattern. On these gray clouds it sort of equalizes everything so that the result is black and white instead of grayscale. This could probably be done with levels, curves, and threshold.

Thanks. I think some of the concepts covered in RobA's Gimp tutorials would apply here. Time to go check them out.

[tcberry]

http://www.binary-artist.com/photosh...e_hard_mix.php

The result of Hard Mix is either 0 or 255 for each channel. if the sum of upper layer value and lower layer value is greater than 255, then it is 255, else the result will be 0.

Example image at the link.

[nolgroth]

And as promised, here is the Earthlike planet done entirely in Photoshop Elements 2. Can use some touch-ups here and there, but you get the general idea.

[Ascension]

Thanks TC, very understandable now...coolness.
Pretty nice Nolgroth.

[nolgroth]

Thanks for the compliment. One thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to have the mountains appear on the continents. Still, being able to use just a single program to get results as nice as these is worth missing out on a relatively minor detail. I'm sure I'll refine my technique as I go along.