When a star like our own reaches the end of its life, it begins to run out of hydrogen fuel in its core. Like a car running out of gas, it will begin to sputter, swelling to a size that could encompass every planet in our solar system out to Mars. When this happens, the sun will swallow the Earth and will spell certain doom for all life on our planet. Today’s tutorial is part of a 4-part series depicting the journey of the inhabitance of a dying world that must travel into the unknown to find a new world to call home. Part 1: The Lost Home, will demonstrate how to create a red giant star as it is about to swallow an Earth-like planet. In addition to written content, this tutorial also includes about an hour of video instruction to help you along the way.
The rest of this series, we will explore the cosmos from the perspective of this fictional civilization as it makes its way through the universe and will demonstrate the techniques that you can use in Photoshop to depict your own cosmic scene or adventure. Each part of this series will teach something new. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!
Tutorial Assets
The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.
Step 1 – Creating Our Brushes
This step is very important. We will be using these brushes, and this brush creation process extensively throughout, not only this tut, but throughout the entire series. So I will show you how to create three brushes and that will show you how to create your own collection. We will be using the amazing textures provided in the links 1 through 7 for this so go ahead and get those first, of course that is my selection, you might find something that you prefer from those fantastic textures provided. OK got them all? Let’s open up this one below from the package Abstract experimental Vol. 3.
Now this texture is clearly divided on two sections, light and dark, so we will be using each part for a separate brush. Let’s start with the light part, grab the lasso tool and with a feather of 20px define a shape of the features you want to have included in the brush like shown here, avoiding the darker section.
Next do a copy and paste on to a new layer so we get our selection out of the background.
Let’s repeat this but this time in the dark section of our texture like shown below let’s define a new selection like so.
Repeat a copy and paste on to a new layer and delete the background. We will start with the dark portion we defined so let’s hide the first one by turning of the little eye icon on its layer.
Perfect! Now let’s invert the image like shown below and then desaturate it so we get a nice black and white only texture.
Let’s first center our cutout of the dark texture and now if you don’t know already here are the steps to take to define a new brush in Photoshop. First define the selection, in this case we just select all, and in the edit menu find "define brush preset" as shown below; in the dialog that appears either name the brush or just click OK. That is it we have a new brush.
Time to test our new brush, so let’s make a new document with the size we will use for our final piece. I like this size below for most images I make, and just fill it with black.
Next select a nice yellow color so we can easily test our new brush; then scroll down your brush list and all the way at the bottom you can see the new brush we just defined.
Perfect now click once to see how it looks without any options modified.
Nice looking very cool, now here are some options to try out on your new brush. Shape dynamics tied to pen pressure gives you a nice randomized effect; and transfer gives you a nice fade during the stroke, go ahead and try these out.
OK let’s go back to our texture select the lighter layer and hide the other one.
We will now desaturate the layer and then apply some levels adjustment as shown below.
Nice, here we have our delightful texture ready to become a brush, now just drag a selection around it and define the new brush, then name it to your liking and click OK.
Now let’s go back to our testing document; browse all the way down of our brush list, and sure enough there is our new brush so click and test our document.
OK looking very cool now let’s enable a couple of options and test again with shape dynamics and transfer setup with pen pressure.
OK by now you have the idea what to do with our textures, so make as many brushes as you want, I will go into this next one because it has some differences from the previous two. Grab the following texture from the mud 2 package, and define a selection with the lasso tool and as previously set with a 20 px feather.
Perfect, now copy and paste it on to a new layer as we did before plus go ahead delete the background layer and desaturate the new layer.
OK now let’s apply some levels adjustment as seen below.
This time we will blend our selection borders even further by erasing with a big round soft brush as shown below.
Perfect we have softer nice edges; now its time to define our new brush, so drag a selection around it and go to define the brush…Umm seems It’s not available. Well when your brush selection its too big, the define brush preset option becomes hidden, so let’s scale down our texture a bit as shown below.
Let’s drag the selection again and perfect there is the option enabled, so now select it so we create the new brush.
Let’s test this new brush too and enable the options shown to test how it flows. Very very nice, now go ahead and create as many brushes as you like, test them out and delete them if you don’t like them, because big brushes such as these take up a long time for Photoshop to load.
Step 2 – Sun Texture
Now we will be creating the base for our main character the big red giant star, so let’s grab our ellipse shape tool with a medium gray and while holding shift we define a huge round shape that exceeds the boundaries of our canvas as shown here and if needed we scale and move it into position.
Next let’s rasterize the layer and lock the pixels in it by clicking the icon shown below.
And then let’s grab one of our new brushes and enable shape dynamics but disable transfer since we don’t want softness on our strokes, but we do want different rotation.
Then with a darker gray color selected let’s start clicking with our brushes so we get the surface texture interesting then clicking with some other brush, and then changing the brush once more as many times as required to get the look we want. Be sure to watch the video so you can grasp what we have done.
OK once you have something you like; below its what I came up with let’s click on the layer thumbnail while pressing the command key (Command/Ctrl + click) so we get our circle selected fast and easy.
Now let’s apply the Spherize filter twice with the settings shown here so we get the illusion of a spherical object.
Perfect, now we have our Sun texture looking nice, of course the sun will not be dull gray, so let’s take care of that.
On top of our sun layer let’s create a couple of adjustment layers; first of go ahead and create a levels layer with the settings below so we increase the contrast of our texture dramatically as shown below.
Now create a clipping mask for this levels layer by right clicking on the layer and select it as shown here. Now let’s create a hue saturation layer for our sun and apply the settings below, and be sure its also clipped to our sun layer.
Perfect now we have something that looks closer to a Sun, now we can start working on our big red star and make it unique.
Now our surface its looking good, but we need quite a bit of work to make it amazing so let’s start by grabbing the smudge tool and a brush such as shown below.
Now here below you can see what we are going to be doing, mostly on highlights we will be breaking it up by smudging it into something that is much more of a sun surface flow; you can see we are taking all the spots and turning them into some kind of burst flames.
Here is another example of what needs to be done; yet this step its one that really needs to be seen on the screen action video so you can really see what needs to be done all around the surface to make it look better and also to apply your artistic touch. So go ahead and take a good look at the video and smudge away!
OK now let’s grab our sun layer and both clipped layers and let’s duplicate them.
We will set this new sun layer mode to overlay, and you can see the dramatic result for these new layers below.
And we will then duplicate these 3 layers once more, but we will delete the clipped layers for this new one.
Next for this new layer we will apply a simple Photoshop filter to give our texture that random activity seen on the sun surface. So let’s go to filter-glass and adjust to the settings below.
After applying the filter just desaturate the layer, set the mode to hard light at about 28% and that is it we are finished with this step.
Step 3 – Painting Wisps
Now we will start painting wisps and more features to our sun surface so what you need to do its group all the layers we have so far excluding the background. Just select all the layers and drag them into the little folder icon in the layers palette. Then make a duplicate of that group, merge it together and of the resulting layer make a copy too. Now hide both the backup group and the second layer copy, we will be working on just one right now.
Now grab the smudge tool with a brush and size as shown here.
Now indicated below its what we will be doing all over our surface; we will break it up adding some hints of flow and modifying the appearance all over.
And in the edge we will start do define wisps coming out onto space like shown here, and for this we will use the second copy of our sun group on top.
We need to alternate between a brush and the smudge tool to create these solar wisps going out, painting some then smudging, then painting some more and smudging again.
As shown below we paint and smudge giving the wisp flow in one direction.
Then we pick up a yellow as shown here or just sample from our image and we repeat the process, paint and smudge a new wisp.
We will continue to add these features on our surface always following one direction and mostly making them appear from highlights or paint the highlights in.
OK this is what I came up with after brushing and smudging quite a bit. This is another step that greatly benefits from the video capture so you can really see all the work done and then apply it in your own way.
Step 4 – Adding Flames
In this step we will be creating the typical corona flames and wisps that surround the sun. OK so let’s make a duplicate of our last layer.
Then we do a selection of our first layer so we can create a mask; remember Command/Ctrl + click and then invert the selection because that is what we need as a mask.
You need to end up with a black mask that hides the sun’s circumference, and now we will need a duplicate of this new layer.
We will go ahead at this point and add a new layer below our new duplicates and fill it up with a deep red such as this one
And set this layer mode to soft light.
Next for this layer shown below, we need to erase all the long wisps that go outside the circumference of the sun; so grab the eraser and eliminate those only on this layer as shown below.
OK time to grab the smudge tool again with a brush and size such as this and start smudging out some flame like corona for our sun; as you can see the mask makes only what is out of the sun surface visible.
After we have done that all around then we will reduce the size of the brush and start adding very small wisps detail as shown below.
Step 5 – Glow and Finishing Up the Corona.
OK now we will work on the glow of the corona and also some detail we will make with our custom brushes, and we will use the last copy we made of our layer and set its mode to screen.
Then we will apply a radial blur to this layer as seen below
Next let’s make a duplicate of this layer so we can increase the effect look, and merge both back to one layer.
Perfect. Since we merged, the mask is gone so let’s add a new layer mask by clicking on the mask icon.
And we will use this mask to hide some of the glow as shown here so we get something more delicate and random with a big soft brush.
Next let’s create a new layer and duplicate the layer 2 copy 6
We will be using only the mask from this duplicate, so drag the mask to our new layer and delete the duplicate.
OK to work on this we will be using one of our brushes we created that gives us a nice cloudy effect, so grab one that you like or load my brushes included in this tutorial so you can choose exactly the same one.
And then in the brush palette let’s setup the brush like shown here with shape dynamics and transfer.
Then we will be using the same red we chose for the overlay layer and this bright orange; colors don’t need to be exact, so you choose what you like that is similar or sample from the image, there is no sense having you type color values for this.
OK let’s start with the dark red and start adding some cloudy effect as seen below.
Now let’s change up to the bright orange and add some more cloudy masses.
If it becomes too much just use the same brush with the same settings to mask it off a bit.
Once you are finished with this let’s setup this layer mode as screen.
Once you are satisfied, we will now make a new layer that we will use to add some glow
For this we will select a big soft brush and set it up for transfer only with the pen pressure option turned on.
OK now let’s use a color such as this one and paint a bit of a glow around our sun.
Next up let’s duplicate this layer, drag it all the way down and set it to screen mode and set the one on top to multiply.
There we have it now it’s looking much better.
Next up we will be finishing up work on our sun by adding more detail to what we already have so let’s pick up this brush and set it very small. Plus let’s sample from our colors for a bright yellow such as this one below.
OK let’s create a new layer and start painting some detail in our wisps and flames.
You can see the effect the delicate strokes have on the overall look of our sun detail.
And the result of our work here is shown below; be sure to check out the screen capture and have fun painting more or less detail, just don’t go overboard.
Step 6 – Earth-like Planet
For this next step we will be creating the planet in front of our huge sun and we will be using a satellite image from Visible Earth site included in the links so download that one or choose one you like.
Now just select it all and paste it on to the image we are working on.
Now let’s scale the image so we can see it all on our canvas.
Next just drag a circle selection over an area that we like to include for our planet and then invert the selection and delete what is outside.
Now let’s spherize it a bit so we can get the planet like illusion. With the settings below let’s apply it twice.
Nice, now let’s just scale it further and position it as shown.
Next let’s apply a levels adjustment layer to our planet so we have a shadow and let’s clip it to our planet layer.
And using the levels layer mask just mask out the shadow effect just a bit all around the planet, with a medium soft brush.
Now we will be locking the pixels in our planet by clicking on the icon for this as shown here, then let’s pick up a nice bright yellow from our image as shown and with "soft light" selected for our brush we will paint around the same area with the same soft brush to add this yellowish highlight effect as shown below.
Great, now we need another adjustment layer for our planet; this time a color balance layer so we can apply the red tone the sun its emitting, so go ahead and create the color balance as shown and set it up like in the example. We will be adjusting the mid tones and the highlights so there is an image for each of those settings below. And there we have our planet ready.
Steps 7 – 12 Continued Below
You can view steps 7 – 12 using the pagination below.
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