Create Surreal Planetary Object in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the process of creating this awesome looking, surreal planetary object in Photoshop. Along the way, we will use the 3D function in Photoshop CS6 to render the base sphere, as well as the use of clipping masks for applying the textures over the 3D render. We will use a number of selection tools and free transform tools during the process. Various layer blending modes will be applied to achieve the best result possible.

This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try!

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Rock Stock 1

Rock Stock 2

Fire Stock

Nebula Brushes

3D Sphere Render (if you don’t have Photoshop CS6)

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px * 800px with black background. Create a new layer and use the Ellipse Tool to draw a circle with no fill colour and no border color:

If you have Photoshop CS6, you can go to 3D > New Mesh from Layer > Mesh Preset >  Sphere and create a sphere. If not, you can simply down the 3D render here:

You can slightly adjust the global light and the coordinates of the sphere, according to the settings below:

Once you’re happy with the sphere, right-click this layer and go to “Render” and render this 3D object:

You can covert this layer into a smart object for future editing, and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

We can work on the texture application for this sphere in this step.

We can dig two holes for this planet to the following positions, using layer mask:

Use the cloud filter to render some smoke into the holes:

Optionally, you can use a particle brush to add some dots around the planetary object to act as stars:

Load the Rock Stock 1 image into Photoshop and grab a small piece of it, paste it over to our document and set this new layer as clipping mask to the planetary object layer:

Add the following 3 adjustment layers as clipping mask on top of the rock texture layer:

Black and White

Curves

Levels

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 3

Load the Rock Stock 2 image into Photoshop and select the top portion of the rock as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document and position it as shown below:

Hint: you will need to use the free transform tool to adjust the shape and size of the rock.

Use a soft eraser to carefully remove the bottom of the rock, so it blends with the planetary body:

Repeat the process above to add another rock piece to the right side of the planetary body:

Optional: we can add some particle effect around the rock with a particle brush:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

We will add some fire effect to our planetary object. Load the fire stock into Photoshop and select the following portion:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, then experiment the following 4 blending mode and see what result they bring to the image:

1. Color Burn
2. Color Dodge
3. Overlay
4. Vivid Light

Repeat the above steps and apply fire texture to different parts of the planet as shown below:

Step 5

We can add some small asteroids into the image. Go to the Rock Stock 2 and select a small piece as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection to our document and use a small eraser to fade the edge of the rock:

Apply the following Levels adjustment to this small rock layer:

Repeat the above steps and add more rocks to our image, as shown below:

We can use the Nebula brush to add some Nebula effect to our image:

and here is the effect so far:

I further added some colours to the image and here is the final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy going through it and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.

Till next time, have a great day!

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