I know a lot a people think it must take hours to make a planet and it's too much work to do it, well in some cases yes, but today I will be showing how to make a simple Planet in Photoshop that should take less than 10 min and it's very useful to implement in other images.

To begin with my creation the only thing we need is a texture to use it on the planet, it doesn't need any special texture, just a regular rusty texture will do it.

Now that you have the texture, use the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) to make a circle and create layer mask, leaving only the part that I will use to make the planet.

Holding Ctrl click on the layer mask just to get the selection of the circle again, click on the texture layer and apply Filter > Distort > Spherize (100%) you should get something like this:

Create a new layer and use that same trick to select the circle again ( hold Ctrl and click on the layer mask of the texture layer) paint the selection of the new layer in any color you want, and set the Fill to 0%. Go to Layer > Layer Style and apply Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, and Inner Glow. These are the setting I used:

As you play with the settings you can chose the color you want and other settings that will effect on the look of y our planet, this is what I got so far. To see better the results go to the background layer and paint it black.

Now with the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) make a circle smaller than the planet that will be the shadow on the planet.

Apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur 10.0 and set the layer Fill to 85%. Also to give a better even look I want to go back o the texture layer and apply Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (Shift+Ctrl+U) you can have it any color you want to give a better look to your planet.

Now on the background layer apply Filter > Render > Lens Flare. Chose the one that adapts better for the color and look of your planet and apply on the side where the light should be coming from.

This is how you layers should look like when you get to this point.

Now that you know how to make a planet you can use your imagination and work more around it.

Download the .psd

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About the author

Hi! I'm Paulo Canabarro and I'm here to post some really cool stuff for you, if you have any ideas or any requests please get @ me - pvpcanabarro@gmail.com you can also Follow me on twitter!

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