Earth Portal

Step 1.

Start a new document of any size, I'm using 500x500. Create a new layer, and fill it with black (#00000)

Step 2.

Set your foreground color to #FFFFFF (white) and get out the Brush tool. and set it up like this:

Step 3.

Now draw some random squiggly lines on the canvas, and a few dots. Just don't go overboard:

Step 4.

Go to Filter->Blur->Radial Blur, and apply these settings:

Results:

Step 5.

Next go to: Filter->Stylize->Find Edges

Press Ctrl + i On your keyboard to invert the colors, result:

Step 6.

Repeat step 4, go to: Filter->Blur->Radial Blur

Result:

Step 7.

Next get out the Brush tool again, set your foreground color to white (#FFFFFF) if it isn't already, and set your brush up like this:

Now on the same layer, we'll doodle around a little more, just focus on the center of the image here though and don't go overboard:

Step 8.

Now we're going to repeat the steps we did above again.

Filter->Blur->Radial Blur:

Filter->Stylize->Find Edges:

Press Ctrl + i on your keyboard to invert the colors

Filter->Blur->Radial Blur:

Result:

Step 9.

Okay next we'll apply a distortion effect: Filter->Distort->Wave, and apply these settings:

Result:

Step 10.

Next press Ctrl + J on the keyboard to duplicate this layer, and change the blending mode to "Lighten"

Now go to Edit->Transform->Flip horizontally, and here's the result:

Press Ctrl + E on your keyboard with the topmost layer selected/active to merge these two layers into one.

Now all we need to do is add some color and we're good to go.

There are several different ways to colorize an image of this type. Lets explore the color balance utility.

Go to Layers->New Adjustment Layer->Color balance.

When this screen pops up, change the drop down box to "color"

Now click the small radio box on the bottom left of the Color Balance window for the "highlight" options, and apply these settings:

next click the "midtones" option, and apply these settings:

and finally click the "shadows" option, and apply these settings:

Press Okay and that's the end of the tutorial!

Here's my result:

You can tweak literally any of the settings in any step of this tutorial to get a completely different effect.

Learn to experiment, try something out, and heck if you don't like it, press Ctrl + Z on your keyboard to undo it, and try something else! Just have fun!