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50 Photoshop Tutorials For Sky and Space Effects

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:51:48 +0000

By Steven Snell

Humans have always had an infatuation with the air above us and the space around our planet. With Adobe Photoshop we can create new images or enhance existing photos to include the sky and space as a backdrop. There is virtually no limit to what can be done with some Photoshop skills and a bit of creativity.

As you will see from the tutorials featured here, some of the most entertaining and practical Photoshop creations and manipulations deal with the sky and space. Whether you are looking to make adjustments to the sky in the background of a photo or if you want to create an exploding space scene from scratch, Photoshop can meet your needs.

From this collection of tutorials you’ll learn all kinds of tricks that can be applied to your own work. Some of them are ideal for realistic photo manipulation and others are more suited for fun and experimentation. Take some time and explore the possibilities when working with the sky and space.

You may also be interested in some of our other collections of Photoshop Tutorials:

Space and Planets

Really Cool Eclipse Effect in Photoshop
Photoshop master Fabio Sasso shows you how to create this lighting effect.

Space and Planet Tutorial
Create a very cool look with just some simple Photoshop effects.

Make a Real Planet
Here you can learn how to easily create a fairly realistic planet.

Deep Space Nebula
Create a colorful nebula space scene.

Space Lighting Effect in 10 Steps
This tutorial shows a colorful, creative light effect ideal for space and dark backgrounds.

Space Scene Design
Create a scene of planets and lights by starting with a simple background image.

Painting Planets
Using a texture you can create a realistic planet.

Planetary Masses
Using brushes you can create a nice, textured planet.

Planetary Rings
Give a planet an extra touch with some simple rings.

Creating an Awesome Space Effect
This tutorial makes interesting use of some images for the space effect.

The Beauty from the Outside
A combination of images and Photoshop effects create this scene.

Alien Invasion Photoshop Tutorial
What is space without aliens? Learn how to add a UFO to a simple picture of the skyline.

Planet Tutorial
Create a planet pretty easily starting with a texture.

Explosions

Creating Fireballs and Explosions
Learn how to turn a typical roadside photo into an apocalyptic battle scene.

Create a Space Explosion from Scratch in Photoshop
Using no photos and a variety of effects in Photoshop, you can create this very realistic looking explosion.

Fiery Explosion
Another way to reate a realistic explosion with no images.

Fiery Photoshop Space Explosion Tutorial
PSDTUTS brings us more fiery goodness, this time starting with a simple downloaded image of a planet.

The “End of the World” Photo Manipulation
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to turn an ordinary picture into a cool apocalyptic image.

Explosion Effect
A gradient map and some simple effects are used to create this explosion.

Exploding Planet
Not a realistic type of explosion, but still useful for some purposes.

The Sky

Super Slick Dusky Lighting Effects in Photoshop
Turn a regular sunset photo into something special with this effect.

Vintage Clouds
An ordinary sky becomes a much more dramatic scene in this tutorial.

Ray of Light
Use rays of light with a silhouette-like photo.

Add a Realistic Rainbow to a Photo
Sometimes you may want to add a rainbow when there simply isn’t one in the photo.

Basic Graduated Neutral Density Filter
A subtle yet powerful effect for skies in photos.

Add Dynamic Lighting to a Flat Photograph
The sky in your photos can be drastically improved with Photoshop to create a more striking image.

The Orange Sky
This tutorial takes an image of the skyline as the starting point and gives it more character.

The Magic Night
This tutorial uses several different images to create this sky and the reflection on the water.

Warm Golden Sunsets with Gradient Maps
Turn an unspectacular sunset picture into something more special.

Clouds from Above
Clouds can be used for a lot of different types of work.

Mysterious Moonlit Landscape
A combination of photos and brushes are used for this tutorial.

Sleeping Sun
This fantasy art tutorial will help you to create an interesting image of a fairy.

Planet Integration Tutorial
This tutorial takes an image of a planet and implements it into a landscape photo.

Create a Starry Sky in Photoshop
Adding some stars to a sky is a practical trick that could easily come in handy.

Adding Fireworks to a Photo
Fireworks can be taken from one photo and dropped right into another.

Realistic Fog and Mist
Create realistic fog in just a few steps.

Quick Sunsets
Take a photo shot during the day and give it a sunset effect.

Create a Stunning 4th of July Collage
Using a few images you can create a festive collage.

The Soft Sea Light
Create a planet on the horizon of the sea.

How to Break Sunlight Through the Clouds
When working with images of the sky, adding a sunlight or ray effect can create a completely different look.

The White Tree
Create a more interesting and dramatic sky in the background of a photo.

Mysterious Lightning
This tutorial uses a few different photos to create the scene and some Photoshop touches for the lightning.

Illustrations

Mysterious Lighting Effect Tutorial for Photoshop
Create a dark, cartoonish sky scene.

Create a City Skyline
A fun, cartoon skyline.

Cartoon Sky
Create a simple cartoon sky that could be used for many purposes.

Creating a Fantastic Fantasy Night Sky in Photoshop
If you’re after the fantasy look as opposed to a photo-realistic look, this tutorial is for you.

Nature’s Sunshine
In this tutorial you’ll create a wallpaper of a fun sunset

Video

Creating Clouds
This video tutorial will show you how to create realistic clouds with brushes.

Space Planet Tutorial
Another helpful video tutorial that will show you how to create a space scene.

Create Stunningly Realistic Planets
This video will show you how to get the realistic look with Photoshop.

Related resources

You may also be interested in some of our other collections of Photoshop Tutorials:

About the author

Steven Snell has been designing websites for several years. He actively maintains a few blogs of his own, including DesignM.ag, which regularly provides articles and resources for web designers.

Microsoft Squeaks Out SQL Server 2008 Not a Moment Too Soon

Walaika Haskins — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:48:17 +0000

Following a nearly six-month delay from its original target release date, Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of its SQL Server 2008 Wednesday. The software maker had initially planned to launch the database application in February, but in January said it would have to move the date back to the third quarter. With the software’s code finalized and on its way to production, Microsoft is emphasizing that SQL Server 2008 will still arrive within three years of the release of the previous version, SQL Server 2005.

Where Are All the Dangerous DNS Exploits? Nowhere and Everywhere

Chris Maxcer — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:00:31 +0000

Dan Kaminsky, the security researcher who first sounded the alarm that the entire Internet was in grave danger due to a widespread vulnerability, has revealed in front of a packed audience at the Black Hat security conference the details behind the initial subterfuge — and potential problems that could still pick apart the Web world as we know it. At the heart of the matter is the Domain Name System, which handles Internet addresses and routes traffic accordingly.

McCain Camp Employs Comment Spam

Jason Lee Miller — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:55:16 +0000

At what point does campaigning become propaganda? Immediately? When does shrewd and savvy cross the line to become just plain yick? Senator John McCain’s campaign squad doesn’t seem all that concerned about these questions; blog comment spam these days is just part of the political landscape.

If the landscape consists of AstroTurf, anyway.

Facebook Sees Significant Growth In Japan

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:13:30 +0000

The Japanese language version of Facebook had more than triple the amount of visitors to its site in the past year according to comScore World Metrix.

The leading social network in Japan was Mixi.jp with 12.7 million visitors in June. Facebook, which recently launched a Japanese language version of the site, has seen significant growth in the past year, gaining 213 percent to 538,000 visitors. MySpace captured 1.2 million visitors, up 10 percent over a year ago; Orkut attracted 638,000 visitors and Gree brought in 455,000 visitors.

Google Aims to Make It Big in China With Music Giveaway

Jeff Meisner — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:59:51 +0000

Search engine giant Google has launched a new music search service in China that enables users to legally download online music. Music OneBox, which is backed by some of the major global music labels, as well as Chinese basketball star Yao Ming, is available at Chinese music site Top100.cn. Google launched it with the intent of giving users an easy and legal way to obtain music — and to give music labels and publishers a new channel for distributing, promoting and monetizing their content.

LaTimes.com Credits SEO As Traffic Winner

Jason Lee Miller — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:07:29 +0000

Tech-pundits have droned on for years that print is dead. It sure started to seem that way this year, with report after report of lost newspaper revenue and subscribers. Cooler heads all along have countered the impending doom theory with the idea that nothing worth anything dies—it only evolves. The LA Times puts itself up an example of the latter idea.

Reuters Seeks Political MoJo

David A. Utter — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:04:52 +0000

Mobile journalism appeals to Reuters as conventions for the Democratic and Republican political parties prepare to take place in the coming weeks.

Researchers: Online Geegaws Can Open Door to Flimflammery

Jordan Robertson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:35:10 +0000

One of the biggest problems with the so-called Web 2.0 movement has been its encouragement of oversharing — which often means underestimating security risks. Adding doodads of varying quality to a home page can add a lot of pizazz, but can also be fraught with danger, since they can open a door for hackers. It’s a threat even for the biggest Web companies, including Google, whose “gadgets” are increasingly juicy targets for hackers, two security researchers said Wednesday.

WTF Blog Clutter Design: How Many Feed Icons Do You Need?

Lorelle VanFossen — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:15:44 +0000

A question came up during this WTF Blog Design Clutter series asking how many feed icons to we need on our blogs. We looked at feed clutter on your blog but how many is too many and which ones do you need?

How many do you think you need?

The two most popular feed types are RSS and Atom. That’s it. How many feed icons do you have on your blog? Hmm?

These are the types of feed, the code that generates the feeds based upon XML formats. From here, there are different types of content that can go into the feed, various off-site alternatives for handling your feeds (called feed subscription services), and many colorful, cluttering feed icons that promote all the different feed readers.

How Do I Offer All Three Feeds on My Blog?

Most blogging platforms like MoveableType, WordPress, and Blogger offer all of the feed types built-in. You don’t have to do anything. You can promote your feed link, but your feeds are generated automatically.

WordPress has an interesting feed capability, generating all the feed types from a single feed permalink: http://example.com/feed/. From there, you can customize the various content feeds to provide feeds to your readers for your various categories, authors, tags, or whatever.

Should you showcase both types of feeds on your blog? It depends upon your readers and your blog’s design. Most bloggers feature a single feed subscription link, but may also feature the two individual types of feeds in their blog footer.

Since the feed is discoverable through your feed reader’s subscription tool, or automatically when you add the blog’s URL to the feed reader, such links are more a courtesy rather than a design necessity.

Alternative Feed Subscription Services

There is a lot of confusion about built-in feeds and feed subscription services. Many bloggers are told that they must get a Feedburner subscription as part of starting their new blog. Do you really need it?

Feed subscription services, like Feedburner or FeedBlitz, offer alternative methods for offering your feed to your readers, and icons for feed readers. They have a interesting features such as statistics tracking and easy subscribing, but if you aren’t into monitoring the stats or all of the customization features, then why bother?

Why bother? I want the feed counter chicklet on my blog!

What does your feed counter chicklet really say about your blog? Feedburner uses various statistics and generalizes them to generate the feed counter score, but is it really representative of the number of people who subscribe to your blog?

If your blog offers auto-discoverable feeds, then your feed reader might be finding those and not the Feedburner or another feed subscription service. Thus, those numbers would not be counted. If they are accessing a specific category or author feed that Feedburner doesn’t list, those numbers are also not counted. There are a lot of ways your feeds are accessed that off-site services can’t monitor.

If your feed counter chicklet lists 26,456 subscribers - wow! Many people think that’s reason enough to add this feed to their feed reader. A lot of people think this is worthwhile stuff, right?

If your feed counter chicklet lists 6 subscribers, does that mean your blog is new? Well, you’ll grow in time. We’ll come back when you’re older and wiser…right? Or does that mean they just added the chicklet and the number isn’t reflective of the reality, history, and value of the blog?

Personally, I have both Feedburner, FeedBlitz (via email), the default WordPress feeds on Lorelle on WordPress. WordPress.com is working on their statistics for feeds, so I don’t have an accurate number for those. Still, comparing the number of subscribers on my subscription services with information from when WordPress.com offered feed data, most of my readers are using the built-in feed than the off-site feed subscription services. So the Feedburner Chicklet really doesn’t represent the numbers on my blog, does it?

Still, it looks cool. So why not? Right?

Your built-in feed service is usually enough, but there is something fascinating about that feed counter ticker that sits in your blog’s sidebar as a scorecard for your feed subscription numbers. In the early days, many reported a dramatic increase in feed subscribers when they added the counter, but is the thrill gone? Are you motivated to subscribe to a Feedburner feed because of the counter? Or will any feed do?

It’s up to you to leave your feed clicklet in your sidebar, but if it is competing with a lot of visual clutter, or adding to the clutter, and the number isn’t really high, consider placing it in a less visible spot until it can add value to your blog. And consider changing all of your feeds to a single feed source rather than dividing it up between built-in feeds and feed subscription services.

Then Why Does Bobby Blogger Have 28 Feed Icons in His Sidebar?

The feed icons that clog up many a blog sidebar are not really feed icons. They are icons and badges representing various feed readers, giving visitors a quick way to add that blog’s feed to their specific feed reader.

As mentioned in WTF Blog Clutter: Feed Clutter, you don’t need a feed icon for every feed reader out there. Most of the serious feed reading folks have a favorite feed reader which features a bookmarklet or toolbar that makes adding feeds to their feed reader a simple click or two. You don’t need to clutter up your blog with all of those feed icons. It’s great promotion for the feed reader companies, but your readers don’t need to see all those icons.

There are Plugins and scripts that will shrink down the vast list of feed reader submission links to a couple clicks, but again, why bother. If someone wants to add your blog to their feed reader, let them use their tools and stop cluttering up your blog with a bunch of useless icons that promote the various feed readers available with their logos - they certainly aren’t sending you business?

How Many Feeds Should I Offer?

At the minimum, your blog should offer RSS or Atom feeds for your blog posts, blog comments, and individual post comments (seen only on the single post pageview). If you have a WordPress blog, that’s only one feed link, not two, as WordPress will automatically create the right feed for the feed reader.

If your blog offers categories as bodies of work of all related, informative content, then offer a feed for each category.

If your blog features more than one blogger, offer readers an option to track that author with their own feed.

If your blog uses tags more than categories for blog navigation, offer the top ten tags as feeds.

The more feed options you offer, the more confusing it can get for your readers. Make your feed subscription link go to a feed page listing your various feed options neatly categorized, inviting the reader to choose which ones they wish to follow in their feed reader.