Maximum PC - UK (2019-09)

Design Your Own

Celestial Bodies

1

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Create a new document at an appropriate size—we’ve gone

for 1920x1080 pixels—and create a new layer from the

Layers palette, then delete the background layer, so you have a

single, floating, transparent layer. For the first planet, use the

Elliptical Marquee tool to create a circle (hold Shift) in the center

of the canvas—use Smart Guides to find the center—and head

to “Edit > Fill.” Click “Custom Pattern” and choose “Ant Farm”

or “Water” (we’ve used the latter) [Image A]. The circle fills with

your pattern, but it’s repetitive and looks artificial—we’ll deal

with this later, but you could use a custom non-repeating texture

image, drawing your circle on it, before cutting it to a new layer.

2

A VAULT BETWEEN THE WATERS

To break up the repetition, and to make the planet look

more like a planet, use filters. It’s worth converting the

layer for Smart Filters (from the “Filter” menu) first—this allows

you to come back and edit them later. Following this, and with

the selection still in place, open “Filter > Filter Gallery.” We’re

going to build up three layers of filters, beginning with Stained

Glass (from “Texture”). Add a new filter layer using the button at

the bottom-right of the Filter Gallery, and add Diffuse Glow from

“Distort.” Add a new layer and apply Bas Relief from “Sketch.”

Play with the settings for all three until you’ve got something

you’re happy with. Ours looks like one of the moon’s maria, and

THE FINAL FRONTIER IS NOT, as we’d previously supposed, a custom loop of hard-piped water

cooling, but space itself. Until we can use miniature stable wormholes to employ the chilly

temperatures of a hard vacuum to cool our CPUs (give it time, it’ll happen), we have to resort to

our imagination to conjure planetscapes around distant stars.

Photoshop is well placed for this kind of digital background painting, as it contains all the

tools you need to create a reasonably lifelike solar system view. If you want to import your own

textures, you can, but we’ve chosen to use the app’s own features, and fix their shortcomings.

Good textures for a planet’s surface can be anything from a rusty patch on the fender of

a truck to a weatherbeaten sidewalk being forced apart by weeds. Anything can become a

texture, and it will be especially challenging to find one if you want to have a network of cities

visible on your planet.

If you’re interested in rendering spaceships, this is the perfect sort of background to show

off your creations. Otherwise, you can use it as a backdrop for text, or just as a relaxing screen

wallpaper. –IAN EVENDEN

YOU’LL NEED THIS

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

Subscribe to a suitable

package at http://www.adobe.com.

if we darken off the red color using “Levels” or “Hue/

Saturation,” it’ll look a bit like Pluto [Image B].

3

LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR

If your planet looks flat, use “Filter > Distort >

Spherize” to give it some bulge—this is why the

original circle had to be in the center, as Spherize works

from the center out. When happy, create a new layer, fill it

with black, and move it to the bottom of the layers stack.

That’s your howling void. Back on dry land, we’re going

C

AB

©^

AD

OB

E

62 MAXIMUMPC SEP 2019 maximumpc.com

R&D