Here is a preview of  the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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OK let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Soil Texture

Step 1

Create a new document sized 740px * 700px, fill the background with black colour. Create a new layer called “planet”, and use the Elliptical Marquee Tool with 1px feature, hold down Shift Key and draw a circle as shown below:

Press Shift + F5 and fill the circle with white colour:

Move this circle to the bottom right corner of the canvas:

On this planet layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Drop Shadow

Outer Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

New I would like to add some irregularly lighting around the planet. To do this, add a layer mask on the planet layer as shown below:

and here is the effect after applying the layer mask:

Load the “Soil Texture” into Photoshop, load the selection of the planet layer and move the selection onto the soil texture, then copy and paste a piece of soil onto our canvas as shown below: (make sure you fit the selection to the planet circle we drew before)

Change the blending mode of this soil layer to “Overlay”, drop the layer opacity to 65%, you will have the following effect:

Add the following adjustment layer to the soil texture layer: (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Black and White

Levels

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Now let’s add a bit of cloudy effect around the planet to make it look more mysterious. Create a new layer called “cloud” and use the Lasso tool with 50px feather to draw a selection as shown below:

Render some cloud inside the selection as shown below:

Press Ctrl + L to bring up the Level adjustment tool, apply the following settings to add some contrast in the cloud:

Warp the cloud as shown below:

Then resize and rotate the cloud if necessary, and make a few duplicates of the cloud layer, scatter them around the planet to areas shown below:

Keep adding more cloud effect around the planet by duplicate the cloud layer a few times, adjust the layer opacity along the way to fine-tune the effect:

Step 4

Now let’s add a simple meteor effect to the planet. Create a new layer and use a big soft brush with white colour, do a single click to the area shown below, adjust the brush size accordingly:

Duplicate this light layer twice, change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “soft light”:

Then create a new layer, this time use a smaller soft white brush, do a single click to the spot shown below:

Duplicate this smaller light layer twice, and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “overlay”, you will have the following effect:

Create a new layer on top of all previous layers, use a soft white brush and do a single click to the position shown below:

Distort this dot as show below:

Hit Enter, then apply the distort option again as shown below:

Add a Curves adjustment layer on top to tweak the image contrast a bit:

and here is the effect I have so far:

Step 5

Now let’s add a new layer called “Star” on top of all previous layers, fill the layer with black colour, and go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and apply the following settings:

Change the blending mode of the star layer to “Screen”, you will have the following effect:

Of course we don’t want the entire canvas to be covered with noise, so use a soft eraser to remove the areas where you don’t want the noise to appear:

For add some depth to the star field, we can use the dodge tool to highlight centain part of the image where you want the star to become brighter than others:

For tutorial purpose, here is a before and after view of the dodge tool so you can the effect: (the setting for Dodge Tool is Midtone, and Exposure 70%)

Before:

After:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 6

Ok we’re nearly done. For the final tune-ups, I flattened the image, (good idea to save an extra copy before you do so), duplicate the background layer once and applied the Smart Sharpen filter on the duplicated layer:

I also added a colour layer on top and added some color to the areas indicated below with a soft brush:

The area where meteor effect is:

and the bottom left portion of the planet:

For adding some painting effect to the image, you can again duplicate the background layer, then use the “Accented Edges” filter under the Brush Strokes option on the duplicated layer with the following settings:

As you can see, certain part of the image will have some brush stroke effect:

and the image become a bit more painting-like:

You can also add a layer mask to hide certain parts which you don’t want the painting effect to show:

and here is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

OK that’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational. If you have any question, drop a comment below and I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I took to create this Fantasy Style Mountain River Scene in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level tutorial so some step can be tricky, but why not have a try!

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

PSD File Download

You can download the PSD File for this tutorial via the VIP Members Area for only $6.95/Month (or less)! You will not only get this PSD File, but also 70+ other PSD Files + Extra Goodies + Exclusive Photoshop tutorial there. Signup now and get exclusive :) Find out more about the VIP Members Areas

OK let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Beach

Mountain

Girl

Planet

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px * 800px, leave the background layer as white, load the “Beach” image into Photoshop. Copy and paste the entire image onto our document, resize it as shown below:

The reason we do is that we only want the sand portion of the image to show at this stage, and we will manipluate the cloud portion later on in the tutorial.

Name this layer as “beach”, add the following mask to hide the sky/cloud portion on this layer:

and here is the effect after applying this layer mask:

Add the following three adjustment layers on top of this “beach” layer:

Black and white

Set blending mode to “Soft Light” for this black and white adjustment layer.

Curves

Colour Balance

Here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Now we can tackle the sky/cloud portion of the image. We use the same texture as in the previous step, but this time we select a portion of the sky and paste it onto our canvas.

To add variartion to the image, I copy and paste two different portion of the sky onto our canvas: (One to the left, the other one to the right)

Use a soft brush to erase the edge of the sky to blending them together:

Add the following adjustmnet layer to the sky to the left:

I know when I add the mountain texture later on, the right side of the skpe will probably be covered be the mountain, the left side will therefore become a light source, so the adjustment layer is to emphasise this portion.

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Load the “Girl” texture into Photoshop, cut out the girl using whatever selection method you prefer (don’t worry about the edge) and paste it onto the canvas as shown below:

Create a new layer on top of the girl layer called “shadow”, set the blending mode to “Soft Light” and opacity to around 60%, use a soft brush with black colour  to paint some shadow under the girl and to the right, as shown below:

Add another layer on top of the shadow layer called “light”,set the blending mode to “soft light” and opacity to 60%, this time use a soft round brush with White Colour and do a single click in the position as shown below:

and here is the overall effect so far:

Step 4

Load the “Mountain” texture into Photoshop, select the mountain portion of the image as shown below: (I used the Quick Selction Tool)

Copy the selection and paste it onto our canvas, name this new layer as “mountain right”, erase the edges with a soft eraser, as shown below:

Add the following two adjustment layers to this mountain right layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Curves

Colour Balance

add the following layer mask to the colour balance adjustment layer: (this will hide the rest the layer, and leave only the river portion)

Duplicate the “mountain right” layer once and drag it to the top, flip it horizontally and drag it to the left hand side of the canvas, erase the right and top edges as shown below:

Add the following two adjustment layers to this mountain right layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Curves

here is the effect so far:

Step 5

Now we can do some tweaks so each of the objects blend together with each other. Add the following adjustment layers (and their relevant layers masks) on top of all layers:

Vibrance

Colour Balance

Mask:

Curves

Mask

Of course with the colour balance layer, you can try out your own colour combination and see what result that brings you.

Optionally, you can add one more colour balance layer on top and add some warm colours on the bottom. Here are my settings for the second colour adjustment layer:

Mask:

and here is the overall effect so far:

Step 6

Load the planet stock image into Photoshop, cut out the plaent and paste it onto our canvas in the position as shown below:

Apply the following mask to this planet layer:

Change the blending mode to “Soft Light” and reduce the opacity to 50%, you will have the following effect:

Step 7

We can add some misty/fog effect on the image – instead of using textures, we use this fractal brushset to paint some texture around the image, as shown below: (paint on a new layer, with soft light blending mode and a 30-50% opacity)

Hint: try to mix the Warp Tool (Ctrl + T and right-click to choose warp) and the fractal brushset for better effect:

Of course you’re free to experiement and paint those fogs in a different position :)

Step 8

Now we’re pretty much done! However we can add some final adjustments to the image.

We simply flatten the image, duplicate the background layer, and apply the following High Pass filter to the duplicated layer:

Change the blending mode to “Hard light”, you will find your effect become sharpened and clearer:

That’s it! I also tried to add some colour to the image by having one more Colour Balance adjustment layer, with the following settings:

Mask

You can also try out adding more adjustment layers such as Curves or Levels to add more lighting contrast.

and here is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hopefully you learn something out of it and find it inspirational!

Cheers and have a great day!

I love the fact that space art always conveys a sense of mystery, and the endless boundary to be pushed and discovered. For me, those space artworks are also a source of inspiration, because they always help me when I’m lack of creativity and imagination.

Some of these works, if not all of them, are simply breathtaking. There’s a lot of skill that goes into producing work like this. Whether you’re looking for a new background whilst browsing o2 iphone 4 deals online or chatting to your friends on a design course, you could do worse than these masterpieces. Take a look and if you enjoy them, be sure to tell the artist!

In this post, I will include 30 Incredible, Simply Stunning Space-Themed Artworks that I collected from deviantArt.com. Hopefully those works will inspire you as they did for me and boost your creativity!

You can click on the image to view the author’s home page on DeviantArt.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy those artworks as much as I did and find them inspirational!

Till next time, have a great day!