Realistic Sun

01. Begin by creating a document in photoshop. Fill the background with black, create a new layer, and take the circle marquee tool. Hold shift to draw a perfect circle. Change your foreground and background colors to shades of orange, one light, one dark. Then go to Filter --> Render --> Clouds.

02. Then, go to Filter --> Spherize --> Ammount 100%, Mode Normal. Do this a few times depending on the size of your sun. I did it twice.

03. Create a new layer, and control + click the sun layer to get its selection. Set your colors to default (black and white, 'D'). Then, on the new layer, go to Filter --> Render --> Clouds.

04. Go to Filter --> Render --> Difference Clouds. Do this a few times depending on the size of your sun. I did it 5 times.

05. Control + click your sun layer to get its selection. Go to your clouds layer, make sure you have the selection! Go to Filter --> Distort --> Spherize --> Ammount 100%, Mode Normal. Do this a few times until it starts to look like a sphere.

06. Put the clouds layer above your sun layer, and set the blending mode to color dodge. This will give your sun its basic texture.

07. Duplicate the clouds layer, and go to Filter --> Render --> Difference Clouds. Set the blending mode to soft light. You can always experiment with more layers and different blending modes! This adds dark orange highlights to your sun.

08. Apply an outer glow to the sun layer. Use these settings. The size of your glow (in my case, 57) will vary depending on the size of your sun. Set it at what looks best for your sun.

09. Here it is. Every sun's got to have glow =).

10. Control + click the sun layer to get its selection. Create a layer under the sun layer, and fill it with black. Apply another outer glow to this layer with the same settings as above but with a smaller size (in my case, 30). Adds some depth effect to the glow.

11. Control + click the sun layer to get its selection. Create another layer under the sun layer, and fill it with black. Apply another outer glow to this layer with the same settings as above but with a smaller size (in my case, 13). Adds some depth effect to the glow.

12. Go to the clouds layer above the sun layer that is set to soft light. Take your gradient tool, change it from linear, to radial. Make the gradient go from transparent --> black. Create a layer mask and then start from the center of the clouds layer, and drag out approximately 3/4 of the way. This should lighten the highlights a bit.

13. Link the sun layer, and the two clouds layers, and merge them (ctrl + E). Take your dodge tool with the brush size approximately 1/5th of the size of your sun (in my case, 65), range = midtones, and exposure = 50%. Now dodge around the exterior edge of the sun. This will give the sun some depth and realism.

14. Take your blur tool with brush size approximately 1/10th the size of your sun (in my case, 30), mode = normal, strength = 30. Blur around the exterior edge of the sun to get rid of the sharpness.

15. Create a new layer and render black and white clouds. Filter --> Render --> Clouds. Control + click one of your outer glow layers beneath your sun layer (you can't use your sun layer because you have blurred it). Go the new clouds layer you have just made, and press delete. You should now have a clouds layer that has a big hole in the center the size of the sun.

16. Move the clouds layer you have just made to the top of the layers list. Set the blending mode to color dodge.

17. With the same clouds layer selected, go to Filter --> Render --> Difference Clouds, a few times depending on the size of your sun (in this case 5).

18. This animation is a quick example of what can be achieved through this tutorial.