Tala, as Seen From Space [+Tutorial]

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Ilaeriu
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Tala, as Seen From Space [+Tutorial]

Post by Ilaeriu »

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Made this in Photoshop a day or two ago and just wanted to share it with you guys. I know the land around the canyon in the east is a bit fake, along with another patch of land or two, but other than that I'm quite satisfied with it.

EDIT: Here is a brief tutorial, for those interested. I'll add on and expand on it with pictures, etc.
*Note: This tutorial was done using Adobe Photoshop CS4 and assumes you have a reasonable amount of experience with the program. I don't think it's that hard, but if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Part I: The "Satellite Map"
The part I enjoyed most about this is that I was able to see my conworld's mountain ranges, deserts, etc. as if they were real. This deals with creating the initial "satellite map" of your conworld, as if it were a picture taken by an orbital satellite.

1) If you haven't already, you'll need to make a map of your conworld to start with. This is what I started with:


I made this map in a program called Campaign Cartographer, which will probably be a different tutorial altogether :P

2) Once you have your image, choose only one hemisphere to show. Crop out of the rest of the image. Your image should be roughly square.

Select all ocean areas of the map. (I use the Magic Wand tool to simplify things.) Your ocean should be surrounded by "marching ants."
With the ocean still selected, create a new layer and fill it with black. Name this layer "ocean" and keep it on top.

3) Download a satellite image of the Earth. This will be where you'll get all your terrain images.
Start copying and pasting sections of terrain from the Earth image to your conworld map. Copy a mountain range when you need a mountain range, a section of jungle for a jungle. It's quite straightforward, though rather tedious. It took me quite a while (maybe 15-30 minutes) to become satisfied with the finished product. I'll walk you through the various steps I did so you can get an idea for yours.

3.a) The desert was easiest. I just copied a large section of the Sahara and pasted it several times to fill up the southern desert in my map.

b) Following that, I took grasslands and forests from Northern Europe and the Americas and pasted them in the north. The hilly landscapes of Southern Europe were pasted into the coastal areas of my map. (You can start to see the inspiration for many of my locations :P)

c)The eastern islands were mainly jungle, so I took jungle terrain from Central Africa and South America and pasted them there. You may notice, if you have your own archipelago, that you don't need to paste an Earth archipelago there because the "Ocean" layer outlines it properly.

d) The western mountain range was a bit trickier. Part of it was bordering on the desert, so I needed a desert mountain range. I found some in the Egypt/Sudan area, as well as on the Arabian peninsula. The rest I borrowed from Northern Europe and America.

e) Finally, the grasslands in the north of my conworld merge into tundra. I got the border of the two terrains from Northern Russia and Canada. I filled the rest with white.

4) Throughout this process, feel free to regularly merge your layers. You can often reach up to 40 or so layers, so it clears up a lot of space to regularly merge them. Make sure to cover up all areas. Don't be too worried if some straight edges are obvious - we'll fix those later.

5) Once you have filled up all of the land with terrain, merge it all into one layer and use the "Gaussian Blur" filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur). I blurred mine 1.5, but it depends on the size of your image and on your taste. Feel free to blur as much or as little as you want. This is just to make the various patches of land blend nicely with one another.

6) Use the eyedropper tool on the Earth's ocean. Fill up your conworld's Ocean layer with the same color.

6) Merge the terrain layer with the Ocean layer.

7) Go to Filter > Distort > Spherize. I spherized twice, the first time being 100% and the second being 50%, but again feel free to play around with it.

Your planet is complete! On to Part II, "In Space."

>>Part II is COMING SOON. Please be patient, thanks :D<<

If you have any better or easier way of doing this, please, share! I'm by no means an expert on Photoshop. Also, again, if my tutorial is confusing please ask questions. Part II will be up soon, I apologize for the delay!
Last edited by Ilaeriu on 06 Sep 2010 23:00, edited 1 time in total.
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Maximillian
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Re: Tala, as Seen From Space

Post by Maximillian »

Wow, it's beautiful. How to make one? :mrgreen:
Although, you used too much light on the planet.
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Re: Tala, as Seen From Space

Post by Raydred »

Good job, it's really nice.
Maybe you should do a tutorial, or just explain show you did it, and the image progressing.
Do you still have the photoshop file? How big is it?
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Ilaeriu
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Re: Tala, as Seen From Space

Post by Ilaeriu »

Thanks for the feedback guys! Appreciate it. :D
Maximillian wrote:Wow, it's beautiful. How to make one? :mrgreen:
Although, you used too much light on the planet.
Really? Because now that I look at it again it seems a little too dark. Or washed-out. I think I'll edit it to make it more vivid.

I'll start typing up the steps and I'll edit it into the OP soon, for those who might want to do it for themselves. I might not be able to do a full tutorial, but we'll see :)

I do still have the Photoshop file, it's just under 20MB (19,169KB to be exact :P). Did you want me to upload? I'm not sure how to do that though, imageshack doesn't take .psd's, do they?
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Arzemju
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Re: Tala, as Seen From Space [+Tutorial]

Post by Arzemju »

This is awesome but it looks too unreal :/

You should try use Burn and Dodge tools on the planet, to play with the lights
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Ave94
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Re: Tala, as Seen From Space [+Tutorial]

Post by Ave94 »

This looks awesome.

Your planet has two suns?
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Re: Tala, as Seen From Space

Post by Maximillian »

Ilaeriu wrote:Really? Because now that I look at it again it seems a little too dark. Or washed-out. I think I'll edit it to make it more vivid.
You're right, the light behind it is too bright, making the planet look dim.
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Re: Tala, as Seen From Space [+Tutorial]

Post by Curlyjimsam »

The globe looks great. Are those big lights suns or lense flares? If the former I can't help but think the central one is a bit too big - wouldn't the surface of the planet just burn up? Whatever the case, it seems to me as if you've got the direction of lighting mixed up: how come we can see the near side of the planet if the light source is behind it? But I'm no expert on lighting, and not totally sure what effect you're trying to achieve.
The Man in the Blackened House, a conworld-based serialised web-novel
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