Creating a realistic globe – part 2

Rivers:

• New group above the land group – rivers.
• New layer. (Name it rivers.) Filter->Render->Clouds. Then Filter->Render->Difference Clouds.
• Curves adjustment layer – move the white all the way over to the left so it’s (4, 255), and black is (0, 75). Here’s the look I was going for (with just this layer visible).

• Gradient Map adjustment layer (white and blue) to make just the rivers blue.
• Dupe these three layers and merge them. Hide the original three.
• Set to blend mode on new layer to multiply.
• Copy the water mask on the landmasses layer to the top rivers layer (so there aren’t rivers in the oceans). – with Alt Drag.
• On the layer use the the brush tool and a white fluffy small brush (size 17 for me), edit the circular “rivers” and splatters so they look better.
• Reduce opacity to 50% – or whatever looks best on your land.

Clouds:

Little Puffy Clouds:

• New group above the land group – clouds.
• New layer (in the clouds group). (Name it little puffy.) Filter->Render->Clouds.
• Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer->Curves. (Black 143,0. White 230,255) We don’t want SO many clouds that all the land is obscured.
• On the clouds group – make the blend mode screen and opacity 75%.
• Duplicate these two layers and merge them. Name it little puffy final.
• Filter->Sharpen->Unsharp Mask (400,4,1)
• Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur (1.4). (Here’s a peek at the effect I wanted with the little puffy clouds…)

• Hide this layer and the other layers associated with it.

Bigger puffy clouds:

• Repeat steps 2-5 above layers named big puffy clouds and big puffy clouds final. (Curves may need to be adjusted differently. I had to do this layer as black 40,0 and white 155, 255 and a middle one with 116, 193.).
• Hide the “final” layer. (Before you hide it, your new clouds should look like this, if you hide the little puffy clouds.)

Big swirly clouds:

• Same thing – repeat little puffy clouds steps 2-5. Name the layers swirly blurs and swirly blur final. (When rendering look for a decent hurricane size glob near an area you want the hurricane.) (On the curves layer I set black to 70,1, white to 229,255, and a middle point to 155,116)
• Smudge around in wavy and circular patterns with a large speckled brush (I used size 175), blend mode on the smudge lighten, strength 49%. These clouds looked like this for me.

Hurricane:

• Same thing – repeat little puffy clouds steps 2-5. Name the layers hurricane and hurricane intermediate. (When rendering look for a decent hurricane size glob near an area you want the hurricane.) (On the curves layer I set black to 85,1, white to 230,255, and a middle point to 159,164)
• Create a mask for your hurricane area. On the layer select your hurricane clouds with the elliptical marquee tool. (I chose a slightly oval selection.)
• Alt click on it to show the mask for the layer in the main window. CTRL Shift I to invert the selection and make sure you have black as the background color. Select->Feather 20.
• Use the paint bucket tool to fill in around the oval.
• CTRL Shift I to invert the selection.(Here’s what my mask ended up looking like.)

• Select the hurricane intermediate layer.
• Filter->Distort->Twirl(-166 if in N hemisphere, 166 if in southern. See the images here for images of hurricanes and typhoons.) (I did two hurricanes/typhoons. One smaller and one bigger, just for fun.)
• Add a new layer, name it eyes, and with a small brush that is incredibly fluffy, add a dot in your hurricane/typhoon for it’s eye. (An my final hurricanes/typhoons or what ever you want to call them on your planet…)

The clouds all showing look like this…

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On to Part 3 or back to Part 1.
–Avlor