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Hey Guys.

I spent about 3 hours fiddling yesterday in PS and designed this. I actually am quite chuffed with it.

In this picture you will see a Spiral Galaxy on the top, a Planet and it's Red Dwarf Sun and just below on the right hand side is a Blueish Nebula I did. If I could get some Critiques from you guys on how to improve that would be cool

The spiral and nebula is really cool. You could expand those and make them sort of merge in the middle. The planets though I would remove. It just looks like an out of place dot in a cool background. Unless you can make them 3D looking with more realistic textures. Check for some tutorials on creating orbs. You'll even get on how to do a planet. once you know how it's takes under 5 minutes to create a nice 3D ball of any type.

Thank syn....

I shall redo it again, This was mainly just practice and getting use to Photoshop

ok...you asked for it so here it is:

1. your gas giant is too flat, add shadows to emphasize the sphere shape. the best method for this is to make a layer above the surface layer, mask off the planet shape, and then use a brush. change the shadow layer blend mode to multiply.
2. the ring around your gas giant is not a ring as it is completely behind it. Copy the layer and mask of the bit that should be in front of the planet.
3. the planet is too round, squash it a bit. also add more features, nothing in nature is made of a perfect error free gradient
4. get rid of the dark line around the planet, planets do not have outlines
5. your blue nebula ends too abruptly. Give the layer a mask and then use a large as possible brush to feather that boundary
6. ditto your spiral galaxy
7. the colours on your pink dwarf are just wrong. its pink and yest its halo is white.

the ring around your gas giant is not a ring as it is completely behind it. Copy the layer and mask of the bit that should be in front of the planet.

I needed to know this one, I sat for 30 minutes trying to do that ring but now I know how to.

I thought there might be something wrong with the Dwarf Star but I was playing around with the colours. I will change it later.

nicely done, but the planet and its moon both just look "plonked". they look like they've just been stuck there. maybe make the nebula a little more retracted into the corner.

other than those, well done

NealeDeadlyAlien wrote:

the ring around your gas giant is not a ring as it is completely behind it. Copy the layer and mask of the bit that should be in front of the planet.

I needed to know this one, I sat for 30 minutes trying to do that ring but now I know how to.

I thought there might be something wrong with the Dwarf Star but I was playing around with the colours. I will change it later.

glad to help.

Vampyre_2099 wrote:nicely done, but the planet and its moon both just look "plonked". they look like they've just been stuck there. maybe make the nebula a little more retracted into the corner.

other than those, well done

Yeah I know the Planets are abit rubbish, I just never used any tutorials on how to create Planets. I think I shall quickly go view one and see how it is done. The Problem is I couldn't find the right texture and I don't know how to add the texture to photoshop unless I clone it somehow. I am rather disappointed with the planets aswell but I think the problem is I tried to place a cover shadow on the planet but I failed miserably which basicly gave the Planet too much light.

What I shall do is Delete the 2 planets and make a proper one.

To be honest I think I didn't do too much of a bad job consider this is my first extensive project on Photoshop. I shall practice abit more and hopefully I can get it right.

there is definite promise there. At least you are not going crazy with the layer effects, especially bevel. if you use bevel, I will personally hunt you down with my band of space marines and wipe out your entire brood, and the queen.

But seriously, I have one piece of advice: Photoshop is a powerful tool and to get the best out of it, you need to really get down to the nitty gritty, there are no short cuts.

Also, I was serious about bevel, use it at your own peril.

GreyWolf Lol I think I have only used Bevel once if I can remember:)

Anyways is this abit better. Re-designed the Planet.

have you considered using something like blender to generate the planet/s?...

this will not only resolve the lighting issue, (as you get to specify source, etc), but will permit multi-layered globes, (realistic weather system, etc), and output high quality .png images....

just an idea...

No actually never came to mind Rusty thanks I shall give it a try.

Your planet has a 200% improvement from the first one
If you want to fit it in with your original image you're just going to have to sort out your lighting and shadows. Nice work though. well done.

Thanks syn. Yep those lighting and shadows options are extremely annoying to get around, but I shall play around tonight and see what I can do.

Here's a nice 10 minute tutorial for you.

http://www.freephotoshop.ca/tutorials/e ... t-tutorial

blender planet tut..

also, time to play with radial/gradient blending and layer masks... using a radial layer mask will allow you to control how the planets are blended into the base layers, which will go some way to resolving your lighting problems...

also just thought of something.

a planet's atmosphere gives it a hazy outline. you might want to feather those edges, but yeah.. 200% improvement.

Thanks guys so much I appreciate the help that has been given to me.

Syn Thanks I shall go through that tonight.

Rusty Thanks man, I shall have a look at that aswell, I think what I am gonna try is make a couple of planets and design them in different ways and then do a comparison and to see which one is an improvement.

GreyWolf Yeah I think I shall try that. I thought the Shadows good give me that atmospheric outline that I needed but it doesn't seem like it but I will try a different way Thanks for the complement.

Beautifull work...
Did you know you can make galaxies as well using fractal software ?
((huggles))

Sorry for posting this in the old thread but didn't really want to create a new one.

I thought I would share this on recent work.
* sorry if the pics are too big*

Don't be sorry ... fix it! At least scale it down to 1024x768. - The Rat

This one was abit harder and more complicated to do.

This is basically a concept version I have of a extra-solar system that is situated near a Nebula. As you can see, I created a Ringed Gas Giant and a earth like Moon that orbits it's parent planet, while the Planet revolves around it's parent red dwarf star.
The part I really don't like is the Nebula, It seems I went overboard with the colours, therefore resulting in what looks like paint that has been knocked over.
Another thing is the Sun's Lens Flare that annoys me but I decided to leave it alone.



Just a simple and easy concept art of Sirius A and B. This one was more of a speed design than anything else, so there are alot of mistakes regarding atmosphere and outer planet design that hasn't been faded into the picture yet.

Due to astronomy as a hobby, I decided to do a simple artwork of the binary star system. At 9 LYs away, it can be seen with the naked eye slightly east *I think* of Orion's Belt.
For the hell of it, I decided to add planets to the star system just to make it look a bit snazzy. A planet in transit across Sirius A and a further Gas Giant that in a way it looks like it is orbiting Sirius B.
Even a nebula is present even though there isn't one situated near Sirius. I did a faint arm of the Milky Way Galaxy just to spice it up abit.

Please commit on what needs to be improved.

Neale.

Wow - I had not seen this thread. Thanks. Your planet work is really coming along nicely.

Thank you