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

**ShrannBeldworf** · 10-07-2009, 02:54 AM

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** · 10-07-2009, 03:31 AM

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** · 10-07-2009, 11:33 AM

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.

**Ascension** · 10-07-2009, 06:23 PM

Lots of stuff there to digest. As for the select - color range thing, in CS it defaults to the color that you have as the foreground color so I don't know what's different in CS4 (I don't have it). As for the variation in color, it could be due to my or your monitor, probably mine as I set mine to be brighter than most people and the pics are screenshots...so that might be the culprit. It seems that you found a work-around and I'd say that you did a fine job with that. The part about missing a step I will look into. So how's the planet look with the new color tweak?

**ShrannBeldworf** · 10-07-2009, 07:51 PM

I had to go to work shortly after that last post so I didn't get a chance to post it.

The First picture is what it looks like now.

Second picture was "without" the hard light (It probably looks different to each other in general because I did the tutorial multiple times.)

The missing Hard light might have just been an oversight. Because in the earthlike section of the tutorial it was mentioned on the mountains layer. I would also like to mention that the same issue happens on the "Atlas Style" tutorial. But now that I know, it's no problem.

**ShrannBeldworf** · 10-07-2009, 08:46 PM

And here is an Earthlike planet. Thanks to your killer tutorial. I'll probably use the tutorial over and over again until I can do this stuff in my sleep (well hopefully not in my sleep, might be restless) Also here's a sun to go with it.