Creating a realistic globe – part 3

Poles:

• Hide the clouds group.
• New group above the land group – poles.
• New layer (in the land group). (Name it poles.) Filter->Render->Clouds.
• Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer->Curves. (Black 115,0. White 213,255 and a middle point of 128,106) So there’s large maxed out white areas and a lot of black like this.

• Dupe and merge the layers. Name the new one poles final. Hide the original two poles layers.
• Create a mask with a LARGE (size 200 super fluffy brush) to hide all but the areas you want. Here’s my messy poles mask, but it works just fine.

• Filter->Texture->Craquelure (2,0,9). You should have an icy looking couple of masses like this…

• Un-hide clouds group.

Creating the sphere:

• Make sure you have all the layers showing that you want for the final version.
• Click on the top group of layers.
• SHIFT ALT CTRL E (the stamp visible command – creates a merged copy of the visible layers in a new layer.)
• Hide all the other layers but the black background.
• Use the Elliptical Marquee tool to create a circle the size you want the sphere. (SHIFT at the same time will make the tool create a perfect circle. SPACE at the same time will let you move the selection.) If you do a large selection, don’t go quite to the edges of the image. (I also zoom out on my image so I have more space on my screen to work with the marquee tool.)

• Select->Feather by 1.
• Select->Save Selection. Save it as “World cutout” or something better than I can come up with right now. So you can easily go back to it, should you need to.
• Filter->Distort->Spherize at 100%.

• SHIFT CTRL I – to invert the selection.
• Delete the selection (of the non-globe areas) to show your world on black background.
• CTRL D – to deselect.
• Filter->Sharpen->Sharpen More.
• Layer Style
  • Inner Shadow
    • Blend Mode: Multiply
    • Opacity: 47%.
    • Color: Black and Gradient: Black to transparent.
    • Technique: Softer, Source : Edge, Choke: 0, Size: 180.
    • Quality: Gaussian, Anti-aliased is checked, Range: 50, Jitter: 0.

So your world should have a direct on light effect.

Stars:

• Select the black sky layer and create a new layer named stars.
• Select the brush tool and a small FLUFFY brush. (I used the one I created in the Sparkles and Stars tutorial I reviewed here.)
• Set your colors to faint pastel colors. I chose yellow (fbfcca) and blue (dcf9fc).
• Go to your brush palette and set the following
  • Shape Dynamics. Set it with the following: Size Jitter 100%, Minimum Diameter 33%.
  • Scattering: Scatter 1000%. Count 3.
  • Color Dynamics: Foreground/Background Jitter 60%. Brightness Jitter 17%.
  • Other Dynamics: Opacity Jitter: 16%.
  • Smoothing: checked.
  • Brush Tip Shape: Spacing 36%.
• Paint a good number of stars with a few swipes behind your globe.
• Reduce the opacity to abut 50% – so they don’t compete with the globe for attention.

And wha-lah. You have a happy little gaia-type planet that looks rather habitable. (Click image thumbnail for full view.)

Hope that helps you create a little world of your own.

–Avlor

---

Back to Part 1 or Part 2.