Step 7 – Ships

OK time to add a bunch of ships leaving this doomed planet, for this we will create a simple brush so we can easily paint in a bunch of tiny ships. Let’s make a new 500 by 500 document at 300dpi and with white background, and then select the pen tool and define a simple shape for our ships as shown below.

Now let’s change the fill of this newly created shape to black.

Now use the scale tool to make a decent size of it and center it on the document.

Now as we have done many times make a selection, in this case all, and define a new brush preset.

Now name the brush or just leave it as is. Then go back to our main document, find the brush and adjust these settings below.

And paint a bunch of ship shapes leaving the planet.

Too many? Erase some of them like shown here.

Now let’s select a bright orange color such as this and a very small soft brush.

OK now lock the pixels on this layer and paint in some highlights as shown below and marked in blue.

Great now we will need a new layer where we will add some tiny windows to the ships, so select a bright blue such as this one and a very small 1px sharp brush.

Let’s use almost the same settings as the city lights brush, just vary the spacing a bit.

And add some specs of blue light to all ships as shown here.

Now grab both layers and let’s distort them a bit.

Use the distortion tool slightly to get a bit more perspective in our ships.

OK now we will add some engine streaks to each ship, so grab a bright blue color and a very small brush.

Paint some streaks for each ship as shown here.

Once you are finished just duplicate the layer and merge the two together.

Then just set the resulting layer mode to hard light.

Now we will ad a tiny burst to the beginning of each streak so grab this star filter, included in Photoshop and a bright blue color.

We will need a new layer for this so go ahead and create on plus set it to overlay mode.

Now paint in a tiny spec for each ship as shown here.

Perfect, now select the smudge tool and a small brush such as this one below.

Go back to the streaks layer and pull each one of those down a bit as shown here with the smudge tool.

OK we are finished with our ships, but let’s easily create another group of ships; grab all the ships layers, streaks lights, all of them and group them.

Now name the group ships and duplicate it.

Now flip the new group horizontally and move it into position as shown here.

Then rotate the group a bit so it looks different.

And finally just erase some of the ships as well as their lights and streaks so you have a different looking group. And that is it, we have reached the end of this step

Step 8 – Planet Effects and Small Planet

In this step we will be adding some nice blast effects to the planet plus we will be creating another small planet or moon to accompany it in our scene. So first we will need a new layer and we will clip it to the rest of the planet adjustment layers.

Now let’s pick a bright yellow such as this one and the big soft brush shown below.

Now add a nice highlight around our planet as we can see here.

Now change this layer mode to overlay, and paint in a bit more if you need to accentuate the effect.

Now create another layer below this last one also clipped to the planet.

Paint around in this new layer to enhance the effect and reduce the opacity to about 51%

Now let’s do some fine tuning in the planet adjustment layers; go to the color balance layer and adjust as shown below, notice we are not modifying our previous settings, we are modifying the shadows setting.

Next up grab all the layers and make a group; then duplicate the resulting group

Move all of our new group layer and scale it down drastically

Then move it into position as shown here and let’s open up the group and find the last layer we worked on the other group copy.

Reduce the paintbrush quite a bit and paint in a highlight for this small planet as shown here.

Adjust this layer opacity a bit more and now just create a new layer on top of everything.

Now we will be using this defined sharp brush and the same bright yellow we had selected; if not just sample a very bright yellow from the canvas. And paint some quick daubs around the planet as shown below.

Now we will need a big round selection for this so grab the circular marquee tool and drag a big selection as shown below.

And now we will apply a radial blur with the settings shown below.

Then we will paint in some more daubs and apply the same filter again

Now let’s sample some other yellow/orange from the canvas and paint in some more

Apply the same radial blur and set the layer mode to hard light.

You get the idea of what we are building here we repeat this process until we are satisfied with the look.

Then we will do the same thing for the small planet, paint in some bright daubs in a new layer but this time we will use motion blur instead, with the settings below.

And again we will repeat the same steps until we have the effect we want; then I decided to distort this effect layer to create the appearance of a bit of perspective as shown here.

And that is it we are finished with setting up our planets, just set this last layer mode to hard light, and below you can see the stage we have completed, we have a nice looking piece.

Step 9 – Detailing the Wisps and Flares

Next up its a very long step, yet not much to explain as all its painting in detail for our wisps and flares, so watching the video its a must. We will need a new layer created on top of the red fill layers to start with.

Now we will choose a tiny sharp brush as this one here, and a very bright yellow as the one below.

Now we will go all around the piece painting detail highlights to each feature in all the wisps and flares all over our sun as shown in this before and after images and indicated with blue arrows. And that is it, not much else to say, watch the video and have fun painting.

Step 10 – Extra Surface Detail Texture

This step could be flagged optional, I decided to add a bit of extra texture appearance to the sun surface. Yet it’s a simple fast step you might want to try it and see if you like how it looks. We will need a new layer, and we will also need to go back to our hidden group to make a fast selection and fill it with black.

Now grab our custom brush shown here and simply go about painting in texture for this layer as shown below, with the same bright yellow we have been working with.

Once you have a nice look, set this layer mode to soft light.

Then add a mask for the layer and a big soft brush as shown below.

And mask it off with black where there are bright yellow areas shown here in blue. That is it, I think this step adds subtle detail to the darker areas and it makes the overall feel of the image better.

Step 11 – Detailing the Sun Surface

OK here we are at another very artsy step where there is heavy smudging, much fun and much creativity. So let’s see what we will be doing. First in our surface group we will need a new layer and we will fill it up with black. Then we need that layer all the way to the bottom of the group.

Once we have that done let’s duplicate the whole group.

And you guessed right let’s merge the group and hide the original.

OK we are ready, now we have a solid layer to work with. We will be as I said smudging heavily, so grab the tool and select a brush as shown below.

Then we will go all over the surface adding detail to all the previous smudging steps we have in place but making all of it integrate fully with the surface as shown in this sequence. Hard to get it from still images I know, that is why we have the video in all of our steps and this one benefits greatly from the recording. So go ahead and take a good look at it and have fun detailing.

Step 12 – Final Details and Adjustment Layers

OK we are in the final stretch, yet we have much work to do in this step. We will start with a new layer for this, create it below all the planets and ship groups. Now find the brush shown here and adjust its size as shown.

Now turn on shape dynamics with just angle jitter as shown here. And with the same bright yellow we used for the last step let’s paint in some detail as shown below.

Once you have something you like set this layer mode to soft light.

Next create another layer and drag it below the last one. Then select the soft brush with about this size here and paint in some nice glow as shown below in both sides of the sun.

Now just set this layer mode to soft light and reduce the opacity as shown here.

OK now let’s create a photo filter layer on top of everything and adjust its settings as shown below.

Next up let’s create a curves layer also on top and adjust the settings as shown below

Here is what you should be getting so far, our star its gaining presence and impact, looking very nice.

Now with these last adjustments we need to go back to our planet group and adjust a bit, creating a new curves layer for it and adjusting as shown below.

There that should do it now it looks paired up again.

OK let’s move on create another layer just below the last two adjustment layers and select our big soft brush once again.

Paint in a bit more glow around the star and set this layer mode to overlay, you can reduce the opacity a bit if you think it’s too much.

Now duplicate the layer and set the opacity to about 49% once you are happy with the look of it merge the two layers back together.

Now go back to the soft brush as shown here and create a mask for this layer.

Mask off a bit off the inside of the star as shown here.

Then change the soft brush for this other one, and enable both shape dynamics and transfer with pen pressure enabled.

And mask off from the outside glow to get this fiery storm look.

Final Image

And there we have it we have reached the end of this tutorial we have a big amazing star to show off our efforts and we have learned quite a bit of techniques along the way. Remember to spend a good amount of time studying the videos. Thanks for your time and hope to see you on part 2 of this series.