Creating A World

First create a new document, i will be using 500x500. Fill the background with black then create a new layer.Set you foreground colour to a bright green and you background to black.Do filter>Render>Clouds.

Then render>diffrence clouds.

Now go to Filter>Artistic>Cutout and use a setting between 1-6

and you should have something like this.

Get the magic wand tool and click on an area of black and fill it with a nice blue.

You can now see our world coming together.

Create a circle selection around 90% of the image.

Press ctrl+j to duplicate the selection to a new layer.

Delete the first layer now and you should be left with just our circle.

With the selection still active go to filter>distort>spherize and use a setting of 100%

Then go to select>modify>contract> and use a setting of 5px, the press ctrl+shift+i to invert the selection and go to filter>blur>gaussion blur> use a setting of 1.5. Then press ctrl+f 3 times and then ctrl+d to get rid of the selection and you should have:

Press D on your keyboard to reset you colour's. create a new layer and go to filter>render>clouds then Filter>Render> Difference Clouds.

Get your magic wand tool and select the darkest are of the image.

Press ctrl+shift+i to invert the selection. Then press ctrl+alt+d and use 5px, hit delete, then ctrl+d to drop the selection and you should have something like this:

We need to ctrl+click on the layer with our "world" on to get our selection back.

Now select the the "clouds" layer we just made and go to filter>distort>spherize use a setting of 100%.

Press ctrl+shift+i and then delete and you will have something like this:

Double click the layer to load up the blending styles and and a pattern overlay and use the clouds texture.

Set the opacity for the layer down to 80%.

Press ctrl+to merge the layer down.

Duplicate the layer again and call it "globe top" (press ctrl+j) to duplicate the layer). Select the first layer and put a lens flare on using these settings:

Then merge with the background layer and press ctrl+f.

Select you globe to layer and go to filter>distort>spherize. use 100%.

Filter>render>light effects and use settings like in the image below.

Click to enlarge

And here is you finiished world.

With a bit of playing round and experimenting you can create different effects.