Space Art #2 - Creating Planet

1. Open texture made in 1st tutorial.

2. Duplicate base layer.

3. Go to Select -> Color Range, choose Highlights.

4. Filter -> Stylize -> Emboss with these settings:

5. Select -> Color Range, choose Shadows.

6. Filter -> Stylize -> Emboss with these settings:

7. Set layer's blending mode to Soft Light.

8. Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen.

9. Edit -> Fade Sharpen, Overlay, 100%.

10. Ok, we have now nice sharp texture with depth.

11. Select upper level and press Ctrl+E to merge both layers together.

12. Select Elliptical Marquee Tool.

13. Hold Shift to make a perfect circle and make a selection like this:

14. Press Ctrl+J to duplicate selection.

15. You can hide now your base layer.

16. Hold Ctrl and click on the thumbnail of your layer to select it.

17. Then, Filter -> Distort -> Spherize, 50%.

18. Press Ctrl+F to repeat last filter.

19. Now we have nice, spherized planet ;)

20. Let's add some shadows. Hold Ctrl and click on the thumbnail of your layer to select it.

21. Make a new layer and fill the selection with black Shift+Backspace.

22. Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur, 180px.

23. Ok, you should have something like this:

24. Press Ctrl+T to resize shadow.

25. I want my shadow looks like that:

So just move your center-top square and then press Apply.

26. Use your Eraser Tool to erase unnecessary parts, sharp parts from top of shadow.

27. Reduce layer's opacity to about 85%.

28. Select your planet layer and play with Color Balance, Ctrl+B. I would like to have more cold planet so add more blue, reduce red.

29. Maybe copy our planet to more suitable background? ;)

30. I spend about 5 minutes and here is it:

Click to enlarge

Quite cool. You can do it better. Play with Outer and Inner Glow in blending options to get nice flare around planet. In further tutorials I'll explain how to make own background for our planets ;)