Space Desktop
A brief guide on how I designed an image.
I had this first image [1] laying around, and I really wanted to do something with it. I took this image from the back porch of my house during the summer of 2004. I thought it was interesting to look at when I took the picture, but later found that I didn’t have much upon which to work.
I wasn’t sure if this image would stand on its own for its artistic merit, but I wanted to try to see if it would work, just for fun.
My first step was to apply Auto Levels to the image to brighten it a bit [2].
There were several steps I took before arriving at the second image to the left.
- I removed artifacts with the free NoiseFilter tool by Helicon. Rotated the image.
- Applied KPT Effects’ Pyramid Paint filter [3]. Lowered saturation [4].
- Applied Flaming Pear’s Melancholytron filter [5] and set it to Soft Light.
- Created a new layer and adjusted the color to a flat blue. Set the new layer to Color [6].
- Pasted a new layer and applied Flaming Pear’s Glare filter [7]. Set the layer to Soft Light. Lowered the opacity [8].
- Copied, pasted, and mirrored the image [9].
- Used Corel KPT Effect’s FraxFlame II filter to add multiple colors to cloud [10].
- Added starfield using Flaming Pear’s Glitterato filter [11]. Adjusted the hue [12].
- Used the Clone Stamp to clean up the visible layer lines [13]. Continued cloning to remove troublesome dangling cloud [14].
After looking at the second image, I realized it needed more work. It served as a desktop wallpaper for a while [15].
- Used Flaming Pear’s Flexify filter to take the cloud texture and place it into a sphere [16].
- Clone Stamped and shaded the globe to remove filter inconsistencies [17].
- Used Flaming Pear’s LunarCell filter to add texture [18]. Set layer to Soft Light.
- Made a new layer to fill the outer area not affected by the globe. Applied an Inner Glow, Glitterato filter [19].
- Toned down glow around planet, as well as the shadowed area. Move planet over to the right [20].
- Added text, set outer glow to planet name. The final image is the at the bottom of the list to the left.
