space

[mattover-matter]

Hi, any good tutorials on making that space gas stuff (purple clouds in space) and planets? I thought of making another layer and using some editing, but nothing turned out.

[Mhtml]

Gas? I think you mean like a nebula yes?

[edit:] I think anyone can do it fairly easy, I'll give it a go soon . .. I'll throw up the psd here for all to see.

[Feyd]

Basically just do an image (whatever size you want). Set your FG and BG to black/white (in PS, just hit D). Then do a Filter -> Render -> Difference Clouds.

You can do it a few times until you see something you like, but that is basically it. To make it look a bit better, play with the brightness/contrast, then run some clouds again. Keep it all in B/W and use layer overlays with colors in order to get your coloring effects. Do some adjustment layers with the cloud on it and distort it to start adding depth to the image. Mess with EXTREMELY faint lens flares (small, too) in the distance (nothing cries out 'NEWBIE' like overly used lensflares, after all).

Then experiment.

[mattover-matter]

well, I have had many "goes" at it. Doing the same thing you did pretty much. I did not want it to cover the entire screen, just part of it. I have been looking for something that fits like in the top-left corner to add some spice to this background.

[Mhtml]

If I get the time today I'll make something for you. You could always search the web for pictures of nebulas and stuff..

[mattover-matter]

I did from hubble telescope. Nothing worked well. It has to fit with that background, so that was a big limitation. I tried clouds with low opacity and an eraser. But the lines get all strait and un-realistic.

[Feyd]

You are limiting yourself too much. A lot of people do that when they start creating scenes from scratch. You need to use multiple layers. You don't need to have the effect take up the whole image, you can use it where you want and remove it from where you want. Get your nebula, but don't just do one pass at it. Copy-merge it to a new layer and resize it, rotate it, distort it and then fade its edges to get a second layer and add dimension. Repeat that process, making the orginal (now copied) nebula different sizes and in different places. Keep the layers seperate so that you can adjust them later with brush work (erasing certain areas and adding certain artifcats), adding color maps, adding adjustment layers, adding adjustment layer effects (especially gaussian blurs set on Soft Light, and slight motion blurs as well). You build the image up, you don't just do it in one shot...it takes a few passes for it to start looking good. The key is experimenting...that is what tutorials and books do not teach you.

Here is a quick and dirty example (and low quality due to the attachment constraints), but if you get multiple layers with color maps and blending modes, you'd be surprised how close to a photo you can get...

[mattover-matter]

well, I tried to erase edges but it comes out like a flat-strait line.even when I softened it to 0 :rolleyes: It always looks like ^beep^. I will try, but....did you draw that yourself?!?!?!? That is insane.

[Feyd]

Use a soft brush (with the eraser tool) on the edges and remove along the line (or you can feather it, but you get more control over the erasing with the brush). You could also do a quick mask and do a linear gradient, but that may subdue the effect too much.

[mattover-matter]

I'm sorry. Everytime I try it comes out strait and ugly. I used magnetic laso brush eraser everything. I need something like: I tried and tried but nothing worked out well. How can you make it not look so strait? The example is obviously low. But, you get the picture.

[Feyd]

That actually looks pretty good (ignoring the res-quality, of course). Do you mean the edge going from top-right to bottom-left? I can't quite see which area you are referring to.

What you want to do is use the Eraser Tool. Select a soft-edged brush (one that fades at the edges) at about a 32 brush size (or smaller, depending on how fine you want to be). Then go over the edges lightly, with the brush opacity at 50%. This will erase lightly in some areas, and in others (if you spray with the brush multiple times) will erase more deeply.

The way I prefer to do it is create a layer mask and then draw the erased parts on that. Remember that with layer masks, the mask is over your layer, and anything that is painted black on the mask will erase on the image itself. I prefer this method since you can go back and do many things, without actually touching that image that you created.

[mattover-matter]

I will try. Yeah, I know it looks good :p