Step 5 – Big Stars

Next up we will be adding more stars, yet these will be quite bigger and closer to our point of view; so first of all let’s grab our gradient tool be sure its set to circular and select the custom blue gradient as shown here.

Now in a new layer drag a small gradient in a dark zone with clouds around it, I choose the section below.

And then for this gradient let’s modify the hue a bit as shown below.

Now set the layer mode to overlay and compare your results with the ones below. You can see why the choice for the location.

OK now let’s grab this custom brush included in the file and adjust the brush palette with both shape dynamics and transfer with the pen pressure setting enabled as we have done several times.

We will be sampling color directly from our newly created gradient as shown here and from the clouds around it.

Now we will create a layer for this and start painting some highlighted clouds around our star as shown below, varying the size of the brush as needed.

Next we will be sampling medium blues and darker blues from the clouds close by

And paint with those samples to make the highlights fit nicely on to our image.

Now let’s grab the smudge tool and tuck in these clouds just a bit as shown here.

And now let’s select our paint brush again, no change in the settings just maybe vary the size a bit if needed, and add some definition back to the smudged borders.

And once again we go back to the smudge tool with a brush and size as shown below; you see a pattern emerging in our workflow?

And I decided to add this flow features to one of the edges as shown here, make it more dynamic.

Now sure enough we will need a new layer; as you can see I am keeping each of these new stars in a separate layer to be able to modify them individual later if needed. So grab the gradient tool again.

So with this in mind let’s distribute some more of these stars as shown here.

You can vary the mode for the layers from hard light to overlay to get different looks

Now let’s do a special star, so make yet another layer and drag the gradient at about where you can see below.

Set the layer mode to hard light and grab the smudge tool again with the brush size shown here.

The pull straight in these four directions to add some nice looking streaks.

Now in yet another layer let’s do one more about the upper left third of the image as shown below.

Let’s make this one a bit yellowish, so set the layer mode to hard light and adjust the hue/saturation for it directly as shown here.

And with the smudge tool you can add some streaks to this one too.

Just pull out with the tool again in these four directions, you can hold shift, to get straight angles for this. Then we are finished with this step, take a breather and let’s prepare for the next one.

Step 6 – Planets

Now its time to add a couple of small planets to add too our composition, so grab the elliptical shape tool and drag a round shape of a good size so we can add texture to it.

Now change the fill of this shape to a medium gray and then rasterize the layer.

Now select a black color and lock the pixels on this layer as shown below.

Now let’s grab this brush from our custom brush file and paint some interesting texture on the shape.

Now Command/Ctrl + click on the layer thumbnail to quickly select the circular shape.

Now just apply the spherize filter twice with the settings below to make it appear spherical.

Before we go on let’s duplicate the layer and hide the original as shown here.

Now scale the planet way down into position as shown below.

Now we will add some adjustment layers to our planet so let’s start with a levels layer; create one and clip it to the planet layer as shown here.

Now adjust the levels as shown in this screen.

Next create yet another levels layer and drag it on top of the first one.

For this layer adjust the levels as shown here.

Finally let’s add a color balance layer, and adjust the settings as shown below.

Now in the first levels layer from top to bottom we will use this small brush to mask off a bit of this layer darkness to allow the planet to have an illuminated part as shown below.

Now repeat the same steps for the other planet layer, of course vary the size a bit and the direction where light hits it as shown here.

Now let’s make a new layer and with the gradient tool and the same gradient we have been using drag a big glow from the center of the galaxy to about where the first planet sits.

Now set this layer to screen and use the layer mask and a big soft brush to eliminate this layer effect from the sections shown in red below, as we want to avoid this layer affecting shadow areas that are supposed to be blocked from this light.

Now using the polygonal selection tool we will make a directional selection for each planet as shown below, with a feather of about 7 pixels.

And once we have the selections we will use the same mask and the same soft brush with an opacity of about 51% to mask of these sections so we get nice shadow trails for each planet.

Next up we will be adding yet another gradient from the center of the galaxy as shown here.

And we will also setup this layer to screen.

Now let’s use the distort command to reshape this gradient and make it fit nicely on the galaxy shape.

Now let’s go back to our soft brush as shown here and mask off first around the top to eliminate any sharp edges from this gradient.

Now still using the layer mask and our soft bush, but reducing its size quite a bit as shown below.

Make sure you still have the opacity to 51% for this brush; and mask off sections of this layer as shown below following the flow and arms of our galaxy.

Once you are finished masking off, we will now add yet another gradient in another layer, yet this time we will distort it vertically as shown below.

And finally just set this last layer mode to soft light.

So here we have it our results so far.

Step 7 – Our Space Ships

Now let’s add finally our human technology elements to this part of our story; some of the escaping ships wondering outside the galaxy looking for a new home. So scroll down the brush list and find our included ship brush we made earlier on this series.

Then in a new layer and with black selected just stamp one ship shape as shown here.

Next let’s use the distort command to scale it way down and point its nose down and to the right.

Now just make some duplicates of this ship and slightly vary its shape and position as shown here.

Next merge these three ship copies to one layer and lock the pixels as shown below.

Now find and select our soft brush once again and sample some clear color from the close by star

And then just paint in some highlights according to the direction of the stars close by on each ship as shown here.

Next reduce the size of the brush to only 1px and with the same light blue color selected add some window lights to the ships.

Perfect, now pick up a more intense blue as this one here and find Photoshop’s brush shown below.

Create a new layer and click some burst at the back of each ship

Then change back to the light blue and click a couple of times on top of it

Finally let’s grab our smudge tool again and a very small brush to add some streaks on each ship engine glow.

Final Image

Here it is the result of our hard work for this part of the series, hope you have enjoyed it and mostly learned so you can go further and create more space scenes way more amazing and creative. Let’s meet in the next part of this series and find out where will this journey end.