Planet-making—a whole new world

I came across so many planet tutorials that I had to give that a try. Well, I had a mess of trouble trying to find a planet tutorial I could work. I must have tried at least a half dozen. I don’t know if it was my problem or the instructions, but something always went wrong.  thought I had it down with tutorial #5 but it left me hanging. After I created the planet, the instructions said to add atmosphere and shadow but there was no further instruction. I used the visual for the shadow and attempted the atmosphere but having never made atmosphere, I didn’t like what I got so I didn’t want to post that one. With tutorial #6 I ran into problems with the instructions. It had arbitrary characters—the ones that show up when the html code is incorrect—and, something was twisted. I worked it out but I choose to find another rather than post a link to something that posed too much difficulty.

I am new to these online tutorials so maybe the real problem is not how they are written but learning to read them. Anyway, there are so many that I can always keep searching and trying. Even when the tutorial doesn’t work out, I learn something.I moved on to tutorial #7, by The Tip-Kit.It had a tutorial for a stars-and-clouds background. Had to fiddle with the stars some to get the larger bright ones and I choose to also make the cloud brushes. Those clouds definitely leave something more for me to learn. And, I added lens flare. It wasn’t mentioned but the example image had one. Should you decide to do the clouds, when you get to the instructions on adding color with Hue/Saturation, be sure to click the Colorize on the lower right above Preview or you’ll be scratching your head trying to figure out why it rejects the number.

As for the planet-making? Whew! That’s not a commentary on the tutorial; I’m just glad I finally made it through one. My glows didn’t look quite right so I lowered the opacity on both. I did notice after attempting so many tutorials that they all have several things in common so if this one doesn’t work for you, just Google “creating planets in Photoshop.” You’re sure to find at least one to your liking but, as with me, it may take some trial and error.