Inspiration: Stars, Planets, and Galaxies
We’ve gathered some resources that will inspire you to look to the sky and beyond. This article will have you grabbing a telescope or heading over to NASA. Learn about the recent rage in space-style effects in design. Take a look at artists that have been working in this field long before Apple branded Leopard with such cool space imagery and lighting effects.
Digital Art
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Greg Martin
This artist is from the West Coast of the U.S. He is an accomplished photographer. As an illustrator, his work is focused on space scenes. He has a range of interplanetary work on display that shows a mastery of Photoshop. Check out his elegant Flash-based portfolio. Don’t miss the PDF–downloadable article Capturing Heaven located on his Bio/Writings page.
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Hameed Nawaz
He has a strong and popular presence on Deviantart. He has some beautiful planetary and galaxy illustrations. He also allows other members of the deviant community to use the professional stock space illustrations he has created.
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Mark Garlick
This artist has professional scientific training in astrophysics and astronomy. He did three years of research on close binary stars called cataclysmic binaries. He switched careers and is now a professional illustrator and writer. Photoshop is one of his tools, and he creates both realistic and imaginary astral scenes.
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Gary Tonge
This artist is fascinated with space. In his bio, he states “for as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with space and my own recurring thoughts on what is out ‘there.’ And the older I become the more vivid my thoughts are.” This artist’s portfolio is available via an HTML and a Flash gallery. He has plenty of hand-drawn Photoshop images. He also mixes in 3D art in some works.
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Adam Burn
This artist creates really cool fractured planets. Some of them are emitting light beams like the planet is about to explode. Others have glowing ice shooting through them. He’s also got fiery planets erupting as well. This artist creates dramatic imaginary space imagery.
Tutorials
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Fiery Photoshop Space Explosion Tutorial
We have some great space scene tutorials here at Psdtuts+. Here are a few: Create Spectacular Concept Art in Photoshop, Creating A Fantastic Fantasy Night Sky In Photoshop, Create a Spectacular Flaming Meteor Effect on Text,
A Slick Supernatural Text Effect, or follow the link below to the recent Fiery Space Explosion Tutorial.
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Leopard Starburst effect in Photoshop
Fabio writes this tutorial on creating a Mac space style design with stardust and twirly galaxy flares. The PSD file is available for download as well.
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Photoshop Space and Planet Tutorial
This tutorial starts begins by showing a finalized image with a lot of detailed work. The tutorial itself is not as detailed, but is still a good review on stars and planet-building techniques.
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How to Create Your Own Planet
This tutorial uses Filters > Distort > Spherize to good effect. It applies this filter to aerial photographs. The result is a Sci-Fi style effect that makes planets look heavily populated.
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Urban Planet Tutorial
This tutorial covers applying textures to planetary land masses and then posing the planet in space. There is a second follow-up tutorial on making Shadowed Planetary Clouds. Visit the first tutorial below.
Other Cool Stuff
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New “Out of This World” Trend in Web Design
You the Designer showcases a handful of Web sites that are using a space theme—sites that have planets, stars, or nebula-style effects.
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New Design, Lost in Space!
Fabio has created a new theme for Abduzeedo. It looks great. “Black, full of stars and lighting effects. We chose to follow the space theme, due to the relation the name has with it and that the subject gives us a lot of freedom to create crazy things.”
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Nasa Space Images
NASA has an enormous collection of space imagery. If you’re considering working with a space theme for your next design, head over to the source.
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Mac OSX Leopard
Apple, of course, is a trendsetter. They make something cool and the Web follows. Leopard uses space-style lighting effects in its branding that have some “wow” feel. Check out this wallpaper link or visit OSX site via the link below for some inspiration.
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Ilham Hafizovic’s Photostream on Flickr
This photostream is tagged as PSP Wallpapers. It’s an inspirational collection of stars, nebulas, planets, and space-themed designs.
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GVRDS.O1—First Strike
I saw this link a few days ago and wanted to share it with the Psdtuts+ community. I could only find one space photo in this Flash-based magazine, but hey, that’s good enough to fit it into this article. There is some great work featured here that has some high energy Photoshop mastery on display. The online mag is put together with Issuu, which is a really smooth way to view photos or mags online.
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Nice
Cheerz for sharing these inspiring images. I really like the inspiration posts! Keep up the great work.
Very nice. Your best post Sean .
Awesoooome, i liked so much, this is the best site ever.
just three simple words LOVE THIS SITE!
Great stuff. Would be cool to do a fruit thing, with fruit floating in the middle of a kitchen like planets.
I absolutely love this! Very inspirational.
Thanks.
Nice post , good links to tuts too , best $21 i spent joining here !
Awesome list, thanks!
great links!
I really got into this a while back after looking at Greg Martins work – some amazing stuff there
PSDTUTS for President!
I love you all (in a non gay way, that is…)
another great article sean.. thanx
Yeah. Nice article
Very good article.
Thx a lot
Daniel
Here is a cool site design I just came across http://www.kavoon.com/
I have been thinking about designing a new theme for my website and it looks like i have just found a place to start from. This is a very inspirational and a valuable contribution Sean. Thank you.
Great article Sean, thanks for listing my blog, i love this space inspiration….
I should give a new try on “planet Making”. I already tried but result was cheap and now, you posted some nice articles about this!
Thx
I think that you should!!!
Sweet list..
What a tutorial! I’ve found this site a few days ago, and for me, this is the best tutorials site that I’ve ever seen!
(Sorry for my bad english)
David Carreira
Another thing,
we dont have a Aurora Borealis (Fabio has two great tuts on his page (www.abduzeedo.com) but only for GIMP and Pixelmator).
specifically @ fabio:
You don’t have an extra tut for photoshop, do you? Would you mind creating one if the results are the same (or even better looking) than the GIMP and Pixelmator version?
Greetings from Germany!
great list – thanks!
This site rocks most definitely, I just have to say that they whole space art scene has been going for a long long time and I have been following for years. I have seen a lot of these tutorials and stuff before but I think there are some amazing artists that are up there and on a level with the likes of Greg Martin and Hameed.
For example have a look at http://www.alyn.deviantart.com
It was this guy that initally gave me the tutorials and knowledge to join the ranks of space artists and express my love of the heavens.
Thanks a million for this though. As usual a great post
yes, some good inspiration for design soul.
Wow that’s some killer stuff. Sometimes I wish a had a bit more time to do digital art, but photography keeps me hopping. Keep up the great work over here… Gavin
Gotta love it. I appreciate this!!!!
Nice Inspiration. Bookmarked!
great resource, thanks a lot sean.
Amazing selection of links with some real inspiring use of colour and effects. Thanks for posting.
This site is AWESOME!
I found “GVRDS.O1 – First Strike” very cool.
Thanks!
Nice list of tutorials. Here is one tutorial about creating craters on planet. http://designlabel.blogspot.com/2008/04/6-handy-photoshop-tutorials.html
Thx for all !
It can be bought “GVRDS.O1 – First Strike” printed version?
ps: sorry for my english i’m french
Hi PSDTUTS,
Thought you might like to check out my version of Leopards Aurora Borealis desktop and maybe add it to your list here.
You can see it here: http://designnerd.net/my-version-of-the-leopard-aurora-desktop
Cheers!
Great collection!
I’ve always thought websites with any kind of starry effect background were really cheesy, but I can’t help but like them.
Perhaps when I’m 50 with fake organs and a hover board (If back to the future taught me one thing, it’s that I want a hover board) I’ll be taking a holiday on Mars rather than France and on the way I’ll get views like this.
Anyway, I digress.
Good bit of inspiration! Thanks
Engage Interactive – Web Design Harrogate
It always makes me chuckle when I see Greg Martin’s stuff online. I knew him in highschool, so it’s just kinda weird to see his name here and there.
Awsome! I love this. Thank you for sharing.
STUMBLED!
Always amazes me how talented some people are with PS.
VOTED for this post at:
http://www.newsdots.com/tutorials/stars-planets-and-galaxies/
amazing stuff.. specialy youts abuzeedo
yehey! there’s no place like tuts
This is a remarkable and very useful tutorials. Thank you great!
Great Images!
nice
A lot of beautiful work!!
wow! what a great work .I m so Impressed.
I had to do comment advertising but here’s a tutorial I’ve wrote on how to create a galaxy in Photoshop. Maybe somebody is interested in it … http://blog.hexagonstar.com/galaxy-tutorial/
Planet making tutorials:
http://www.presidiastudios.com/blog/out-of-this-world-1-planet-tutorials-and-inspiration/
I think that this is cool.