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Tutorials Added: Mar 04, 2005 Rating:  Level: All levels Software:   Photoshop

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Vector Graphics Let's face it: stars can be really hard to draw. I'm not talking about the singular balls of blazing gasses, though, I'm talking Price : $ 55 | Details
about the subtle and beautiful star fields that make a piece of celestial art what it is: a portrayal of space. One of the
CorelDraw
reasons space is so much fun to draw is because, despite the plethora of Hubble images inundating cyberspace and science
Adobe Illustrator magazines, most people don't have a preconceived notion of what space should look like. This means that there are
Flash & Swish endless possibilities for wondrous visuals, as nobody's been to or seen wherever or whatever it is that you're depicting.
There is one exception, however: stars. We've seen these before: we know what they look like, and what they don't look
Flash Tutorials like. This means that a couple clicks with the spray -can is just not going to cut it when you're working up a good star field
Articles to finish off your creation. The spray can is a means to begin developing a good star field, but to rely entirely on the
computer to randomly assign stars is quite simply a cheap solution to what could be the defining details of your piece.
Swish Tutorials
Another approach is the ever so convenient noise filter, but shame on you if you use this filter alone and think it sufficient!
3D Graphics Do you want to draw space, or let your computer draw it for you? Let's consider this for a moment... do either of these
"solutions" even look like stars? (Does space look like a snowstorm on crack?) I don't think so. In order to draw deep space,
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even as a background for a more important subject or scene, you've got to think about what it actually is that you're Price : $ 59 | Details
Articles drawing. We're not talking about mere pixels here, we're talking about millions of pinpricks of brilliant light, stretching back
HTML and CSS in layer upon layer, plane upon plane. We're talking about space, a vastly deep expanse filled with exquisite lights and more website templates
shadow. (You've got to get excited about this subject, because that is what is going to power you through the effort it
Tutorials takes to develop a truly great space piece.) What we're talking about when we create our star field is an expression of Related Materials
Articles depth, and this is communicated through two factors: variety and density.

Web Programming Star Effect

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PHP Looking at Hubble images, you can easily find images of stars where the entire image is jam -packed with as many of the
Star Fog Effect
brilliant suckers as possible. True, some star fields are like this, and I've seen several people draw stars with this effect in by FotoFects
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mind, but they always seem to leave out any sense of variety.
JavaScript Star Field
by vXd|Bugz
Site Maintenance Look at the Hubble images: are all the stars the same size? Do they all shine with the same brilliance? Sometimes (and this
depends on the filter used to get the real image in question) the stars aren't even the same color. This leads me to assert Star Abstract Tutorial
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that all stars are NOT created equal. (Thankfully, physics is here to back me up on this one.) Similarly, stars do not all sit on
Web Promotion the same plane of view. Some are far, some are near, etc and so forth. As such, when you're developing a star field, it's a
Domain Registration good idea to have a variety of stars represented. How do they glow, how bright are they? Are they big? Are they small? Photoshop
Do they twinkle or have little crossbars coming off them? Or are they just specks of light? Any and all of these are Related Resources
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absolutely fine, and it's up to you to determine a good mix of each. From this point onwards, I'm going to assume that
RSS we're drawing a generic star field without any special use. As such, I'd advise using a small handful of larger stars with more Free Photoshop Tutorials
detail, and medium to large amounts of the mid -level and smaller stars respectively. The trick is to get an appreciable A huge collection of carefully
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gradient of star sizes represented in your work. Another thing to consider is that not all stars shine as bright as their selected Adobe Photoshop
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neighbors: smaller, dimmer stars are often a good thing to have to give an even more refined sense of variety to your work.
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Once you've established the types of stars you're working with, think about where they'll be in relation to each other. One
Free Stuff Your resource of free Adobe
of the problems with using a spray -can tool or noise filter alone to generate stars is that it's not always entirely random.
Illustrator tutorials, Corel
Design Accessories Stars are not always spaced out evenly: they come in clusters, densely packed like a giant hand came along and brushed Draw tutorials and other
them all into little piles on your screen. They also can spread out to the extremes, with a vast amount of space being vector graphics tutorials.
Sounds
occupied by only a handful of stars all by their lonesome. Both are good, and using both together is even better. The way I
Flash Elements see it, drawing a star field isn't about clicking madly with a paintbrush tool just to get the background for a particular piece
3D Objects finished (although I'm in full agreement that this is hardly the most glamorous part of celestial art). Drawing a star field is Adobe Photoshop
best done when you're telling a story with the stars. Stars have gravity. They evolve. They drift. If you wanted to go the Tutorials
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extra mile, you could even start adding an ambient glow to the clustered parts to show the stars interacting with each Collection of Photoshop
Software Reviews other. The possibilities are endless: go nuts. tutorials and links to other
resources and art galleries.
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Once you've developed a good star field, it's important to use it correctly. Lots of people tend to just slap stars on top of
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their pieces, erasing where there's a planet or a nebula or some other exciting thing. That's all good and well, but
something worth considering is how your background star field interacts with your piece. In particular, an element I often A collection of free web
templates. Premium quality
see missing is light pollution. For those of you unaware of this phenomenon, light pollution is where an ambient light source
web designs, easy to browse.
or proximity to a light source makes dimmer lights invisible. And example of this can be seen in every major city today,
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where you're lucky to see a handful of stars at night due to the interference of the city lights. Space exhibits the same
phenomena, although the light sources are often the very nebulae, planets, or burning stars you're drawing in the first
The Photoshop Foundry
place. As such, keep in mind that the dimmer stars in your background field might be drowned out by the radiance of the
A site providing tips, tricks,
objects in the foreground. Keep in mind also, in the case of nebulae, dark matter is dark for a reason: it's either blocking
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light or refusing to reflect it. There aren't any rules for how you should treat your stars in any of these afore-mentioned
cases, but they're something to consider.

One Final Note

That pretty much wraps up what I have to say about stars. One final note, however: you may have noticed that as I'm
writing, I alternate between speaking about "drawing" and "developing". That's because, just as stars themselves just don't
pop into being from nothing, your star field won't either. You've got to start with something broad and then refine your
composition to the perfect piece. I won't go into detail here on exactly how to go about developing your star field in step -
by-step detail, but I will say that it's always beneficial to start with as big a canvas as you can. If you make a good star field,
and it's huge to begin with, you can reuse it in a number of ways and save yourself work in your later artistic endeavors. In
other words, work hard, but work smart as well! Getting a good star field is worth a decent amount of effort on your part
(you only get out what you put in, after all), but not worth having to work redundantly.
http://www.webdesign.org/web/photoshop/articles/make-a-realistic-star-field.3811.html Page 1 / 8
[Actually, I am going to give you a step -by-step guide to creating stars, just keep in mind that the article wasn't written
with the intention of working as an introduction to this tutorial... it just worked out that way.]
 and it's huge to begin with, you can reuse it in a number of ways and save yourself work in your later artistic endeavors. In
other words, work hard, but work smart as well! Getting a good star field is worth a decent amount of effort on your part
(you only get out what you put in, after all), but not worth having to work redundantly.

[Actually, I am going to give you a step -by-step guide to creating stars, just keep in mind that the article wasn't written
with the intention of working as an introduction to this tutorial... it just worked out that way.]

A thank you to Kyle Nervik of Bougal.com , who helped me figure out how to best relate my methods to a general audience
by being my development guinea pig (sitting on AIM for over an hour, listening to me argue with myself, and offering
suggestions). Thanks, Kyle!

The Basics
As stated in the short article above, it's always a good idea to work with the largest image size possible. This is because no
matter how good your finished art looks, it will almost always look even better smaller. For the purpose of this tutorial, I'm
working with a small canvas (300 by 350 pixels) but I recommend creating your starfield image at least twice as big as the
image you're aiming to use it in -or even larger, if you want to reuse your stars in a variety of pieces (like I do). A good star
field takes a lot of work to create, but can be used repeatedly depending on your level of customization, so you can get
away with using it repeatedly.

A few notes before starting: I also stated above that using the noise filter by itself is undesirable. However, using it to get
started is quite acceptable. Also, dust off your computer screen before actually beginning this tutorial... some of the
early example images are fairly subtle.

To start, first create a new document of your preferred size with a black background. Its important to make sure it's a
BLACK background; otherwise, you could possible get undesirable color effects later.

Next, create a new layer, name it "small stars," and make it completely black as well. We're doing this because later we'll
be erasing, and we want a pure black background to show through the holes we create in this new layer.

Now add noise to the picture. To do this, go to Filters > Noise > Add Noise and generate a noise field using the following
settings: Amount: 10%, Gaussian, Monochromatic. This will make a very subdued but detailed noise field. It may look dim,
hard to see, and unlike stars, but keep it like that for now. Once the image gets brighter, it's hard to go back to dimmer
stars (trust me on this).

The next step is to "diversify" the star field by bringing out the brighter stars and getting rid of the dimmer, almost invisible
stars so they don't clutter up our space scene later.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast and run Brightness: -30 Contrast: 75. You'll notice some
appreciable (but still subtle) results right away.

In these beginning steps, keep things low -key and subtle. Right now, we're just laying the groundwork. Brighter stars
come later.

We're not done yet not by a long shot. Duplicate your small stars layer and name the duplicate "large stars."
http://www.webdesign.org/web/photoshop/articles/make-a-realistic-star-field.3811.html Page 2 / 8
Run Brightness & Contrast again, this time with Brightness: -100, Contrast: 50. This thins out the stars even more to
leave only a few fairly bright ones.
 and it's huge to begin with, you can reuse it in a number of ways and save yourself work in your later artistic endeavors. In
other words, work hard, but work smart as well! Getting a good star field is worth a decent amount of effort on your part
(you only get out what you put in, after all), but not worth having to work redundantly.

[Actually, I am going to give you a step -by-step guide to creating stars, just keep in mind that the article wasn't written
with the intention of working as an introduction to this tutorial... it just worked out that way.]

A thank you to Kyle Nervik of Bougal.com , who helped me figure out how to best relate my methods to a general audience
by being my development guinea pig (sitting on AIM for over an hour, listening to me argue with myself, and offering
suggestions). Thanks, Kyle!

The Basics
As stated in the short article above, it's always a good idea to work with the largest image size possible. This is because no
matter how good your finished art looks, it will almost always look even better smaller. For the purpose of this tutorial, I'm
working with a small canvas (300 by 350 pixels) but I recommend creating your starfield image at least twice as big as the
image you're aiming to use it in -or even larger, if you want to reuse your stars in a variety of pieces (like I do). A good star
field takes a lot of work to create, but can be used repeatedly depending on your level of customization, so you can get
away with using it repeatedly.

A few notes before starting: I also stated above that using the noise filter by itself is undesirable. However, using it to get
started is quite acceptable. Also, dust off your computer screen before actually beginning this tutorial... some of the
early example images are fairly subtle.

To start, first create a new document of your preferred size with a black background. Its important to make sure it's a
BLACK background; otherwise, you could possible get undesirable color effects later.

Next, create a new layer, name it "small stars," and make it completely black as well. We're doing this because later we'll
be erasing, and we want a pure black background to show through the holes we create in this new layer.

Now add noise to the picture. To do this, go to Filters > Noise > Add Noise and generate a noise field using the following
settings: Amount: 10%, Gaussian, Monochromatic. This will make a very subdued but detailed noise field. It may look dim,
hard to see, and unlike stars, but keep it like that for now. Once the image gets brighter, it's hard to go back to dimmer
stars (trust me on this).

The next step is to "diversify" the star field by bringing out the brighter stars and getting rid of the dimmer, almost invisible
stars so they don't clutter up our space scene later.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast and run Brightness: -30 Contrast: 75. You'll notice some
appreciable (but still subtle) results right away.

In these beginning steps, keep things low -key and subtle. Right now, we're just laying the groundwork. Brighter stars
come later.

We're not done yet not by a long shot. Duplicate your small stars layer and name the duplicate "large stars."
http://www.webdesign.org/web/photoshop/articles/make-a-realistic-star-field.3811.html Page 3 / 8
Run Brightness & Contrast again, this time with Brightness: -100, Contrast: 50. This thins out the stars even more to
leave only a few fairly bright ones.
 We're not done yet not by a long shot. Duplicate your small stars layer and name the duplicate "large stars."

Run Brightness & Contrast again, this time with Brightness: -100, Contrast: 50. This thins out the stars even more to
leave only a few fairly bright ones.

Then scale the large stars layer by hitting ctrl + T and dragging while holding the shift and alt keys to keep the
proportions of the layer consistent.
[The concurrent keys on a Mac are Command -Shift]

Scale the large stars layer to approximately twice the size of the original. You'll need to zoom out a decent amount to do
this, and don't worry about the fact that most of your new layer is outside the image boundaries what we're about to do
will apply itself to the whole layer regardless.

Invert (ctrl + I) your large stars layer. We're doing this because it's easier to see the results of the next step with black
specks on white. You should now have a whole bunch of fuzzy grey specks.

Hit ctrl + L to bring up the Levels dialogue box and enter the following settings into the top where it says "Input Levels."
In the three boxes from left to right, enter the values 230, 1.00, and 250.

This increases the contrast of the image with a fine control, giving us specks that are nicely defined and ready to become
our larger stars.

Hit OK.

Invert the layer again, bringing it back to the normal white stars on black look.

Hit ctrl + T again and scale that puppy back down so that it's just a little bit larger than the image you're working with.

Hit Enter .

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 At this point you can change the layer mode of the large stars layer to "screen." You'll notice a sort of tacky "echo" effect
going on. We will fix that right away by rotating the layer 180 degrees.

Hit ctrl + T one more time and move your cursor to a corner of the large stars layer so you get the rotate arrow cursor
(looks like the resize cursor, but bent). Hold shift and then click and drag, rotating your large stars layer 180 degrees.

Hit Enter .

The Story
Okay, so now we've got a very basic star field. However, there's one problem. This is the most boring, depressingly
monotonous star field ever made. What we want is a star field that tells a story of stellar evolution, with clusters and deep
space and such. This is the intuitive part of the process, so you may have to save this Photoshop file and try several times
before you're truly happy with your results.

Take your eraser and start erasing bits and pieces of each layer separately. Be as random as possible.

There is no wrong eraser brush size, although you'll want one with a crisp edge and nothing smaller than about 10px.

Go nuts .

What we're doing here is randomizing the star field in a human fashion, so it doesn't look so computer generated. In order
to make it better, however, we've got to thoroughly trash it first.

Additionally, you should see fewer large stars than small stars, so be especially brutal on the large stars layer.

This is also an opportunity for you to eliminate any obvious patterns you see in your stars (sometimes the computer starts
generating patterns with its noise generation) and we want to nip those in the bud.

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 Once you're all done and have a sad, pathetic star field, flatten your document (Layer > Flatten Image).

It's time to start cloning your stars and "shaping" your star field.

Grab the clone tool... Use a variety of brushes (brushes with a crsip edge are preferable, however...)

The idea here is to now start telling a story with your stars. This is where you make your clusters and dark spaces come
alive. Try using the clone brush both in normal mode, or in "screen" mode (you can change the modes in the options bar
across the top of your screen), which will add the stars you clone instead of merely replacing the underlying canvas. This
will also bring out some of the smaller, dimmer stars that you never really see, giving you a much broader range of stars
(which is always a good thing!)

There is no set technique for this process -- it's all based on gut instinct and whim. Avoid cloning edges, as the stars will
form a very noticeable edge. Also avoid cloning stars and placing them right next to the selected source area.

The Details
Alrighty, that's much better. Again, you may need to experiment with this to get a result that you're really happy with.
Finally, we come to the step that's the most fun by far: adding glow.

Duplicate your layer again and name this new layer "star glow."

Go up to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Blur with a radius of about 6 to 8.

Hit OK.

This gives us a diffuse blur where we have the highest concentration of stars, as if the cluster of stars was glowing brighter
as a whole. Change the mode of the star glow layer to Linear Dodge (or screen if you're using an earlier version of
Photoshop).

Hit ctrl +B to bring up the Color Balance dialogue box. Using color balance (also found under Image > Adjustments >
Color Balance) give your glow a color. This is entirely at your discretion. (I've always enjoyed a good blue, so that's what I'm
going with.)

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 [If you want your stars to have a more individualistic glow, you can repeat this process: duplicate the star layer (should be
your background layer if you're following this tutorial to the letter) and blur with a smaller radius, say 3 or 2. Change layer
mode to linear dodge, yadda yadda yadda.]

That's it! You've got a star field! Actually, you've got an intermediate star field. If you TRULY want to go the extra mile,
you can start adding background dust, larger stars (camera flares work remarkable well when shrunk down) and spatial
anomalies. This is entirely up to you. The main point is that your creation is a) distinctly yours, and b) much better than the
crap Bryce or any other program that boasts star field generation puts out. Why? Because YOURS is human -made, not
based on predictable algorithmic output.

Other Details
As you can see, I've gone a few extra steps in my star field... Some of the items I've added include the following:

Lens Flare Stars

Create a new layer and fill it entirely with black. Set the layer mode to Linear Dodge (this is the best mode, screen just
doesn't cut it sometimes). Render a lens flare (Filter > Render > Lens Flare). Duplicate the layer and resize as needed to
create dynamic star clusters in the foreground. (You'll need a flare layer for every single star you want to create.)

Space Dust
Grab a big fuzzy brush (size is your call) and add a texture to it. For details on how to do this, look at my Make a Planet
tutorial, it's explained in detail (and the same texture from that tutorial can actually work quite well here). Create a new
layer above your star layer(s) and set the mode to Linear Dodge or Screen. Start brushing on dust with a color of your
choosing (a transparent brush of 20% opacity works well here). Sometimes it works well to put a lot of textured color
strokes down and then erase the excess away until you've got what you want.

The Secret
The real secret to star fields, however, is not just the human touch: it's all in the simple process of never stopping . All the
steps I've laid out for you can be repeated, taken out of sequence, etc. In fact, the more layers you have, and the more
work you put into your star field, the better it will be, because you're drawing closer and closer to the crucial aspect of a
star field that most people overlook: it isn't drawn at all, it evolves.

Frustration
http://www.webdesign.org/web/photoshop/articles/make-a-realistic-star-field.3811.html
The frustrating part of all this is that, since you're specifically moving away from the computer -generated look, you leave Page 7 / 8
the comfort of a set method or recipe for success in creating stars. Intuition plays a large part in this tutorial, which I am
finding hard to account for and explain (for that, I do apologize). If you're a relative newcomer to photoshop, the steps
 star field that most people overlook: it isn't drawn at all, it evolves.

Frustration
The frustrating part of all this is that, since you're specifically moving away from the computer -generated look, you leave
the comfort of a set method or recipe for success in creating stars. Intuition plays a large part in this tutorial, which I am
finding hard to account for and explain (for that, I do apologize). If you're a relative newcomer to photoshop, the steps
I've listed above should help you on your way, but the real work in creating the look you want is only available through
repeated attempts. The old adage "practice makes perfect" is applicable here... much as you may want to shoot me for
saying it!

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