Tried out some of the Light, blur and colour filters today. Saw a tutorial on how to make planets and couldn't be bothered copying it so read it - remembered most, and did my own.
My first try at them.

Feedback appreciated.

Update - Not quite what I would have like to have done. Will try again tomorrow.


Tried another one. This time I used your suggestion re threshold. I decided to do some moons around a planet this time and didn't add any extra stars apart from what I got from noise and sparkle. Even found out how to get a range of coloured stars.

Nice work. The lights are very good and I particularly like the big colourful flare at the bottom. The stars look good but I feel there should be fewer of them. The planets would look nice if they were more 3D. The over all effect is really good.

I think if you use some lighting you can make the planets look more like spheres.

Nice results sallyanne, agree with most of the above, one way I have achieved shadow to create a sphere is to start with a grey layer 808080 then run the map object filter set to sphere, Autocrop results and scale to size of planets, then go colour to alpha and remove the 808080 grey, finally play with opacity %.

Thank you all for your comments. Thanks He4rty I will try that when I get home this afternoon

Dumb question I know. I have seen it but cannot find the 'opacity' you are referring to. BTW, I have done the rest

There you go, just lower the opacity of the shadow layer, maybe about 25 - 50, I should of mentioned leave the layer on normal,grain merge or overlay.

I have done another - (in first post). Thanks for your help.
Erisian, I went outside tonight and your right there isn't that many stars in the sky. I wonder if it could look like that though?

Nice work sallyanne, you could try white prior to map shere then you would get that hughlight but you'll still get the shadow and don't forget you can adjust the lighting posito to suit the postion of your planets. Also in the first image if you used a noise filter to generate the stars the using the threashold filter under colours menu will help to reduce the volume.

in the countryside away from artificial light, the sky is littered with stars and it looks almost like your first image but with a little more space. You planets are looking good in the second image.

I forgot about that Erisian. I have done another (first post again) but it is a little different.

These are much better that your first attempt. Good job with the lighting!

Although, I think if you eliminated the lighter lines around some of the the planets, they would appear more seamless.

Not too bad for early attempts. Your star fields look good and require little if any tweaking. There's all kinds of space, that which has a lot of stars (Nebula etc.) And empty space. You're somewhere in the middle and that's just fine.

Since you're asking for feedback, I got a couple of things to share.

Planets are not that shiny. I personally would forego the lighting option in map sphere completely (No Light option) and add highlights to my planet circles according to how they're facing my light source. In a larger space composition, the planets will be mostly dark from the viewers pov unless they are on the far side of the light (sun). They should be highlighted with narrow light crescents that mark the dawn line for that particular planet. The light should be fairly diffuse. Sharper highlights make planets appear more shiny, giving you a pool ball instead of a celestial object.

Atmospheres. Most planets have them. Part of why planets tend to not be so shiny, is because they have gaseous atmospheres that diffuse light. These atmospheres also tend to give them halos. A quick dirty fix is to duplicate the finished planet, gaussian blur it by a few pixels and slide the blurred layer under the original. This will give it a corona that gives the viewer the impression of atmosphere, it softens the sharp round edge and it still carries with it the original color and lighting scheme of the planet.

Lens flares benefit a lot from the perspective tool. You can get some wicked cool lighting effects around a sun, or some awesome planetary circles ala Saturn with the perspective tool. It's fun to explore and a simple trick to give your composition depth.

That's excellent sallyanne. The stars are now perfect and the planets are looking really good. Nice work!