Photoshoping Again!

It has been years since I last played worked on Photoshop. If I did use Photoshop, it's must a be project or task. However since it is holiday and I'm being dumped by my buddies just because of a lame good reason - holiday ended, semester starts, I face my PC almost 12 hours a day! Online chatting with cockroach, Playing DotA, Red Alert, bla bla...and finally Photoshop.

I don't see a productive lifestyle I'm having, except for the wallpaper thingy. These few days I've been crazy on wallpapers (caused by boredom) , especially on wallpapers of myself scenery. I've been downloading a few dozens, but still couldn't satisfy my crave. I want a perfect wallpaper of the blue planet! Suddenly I saw the Photoshop icon....tada...! (this is how I start engaging with Photoshop again) So it is done! However I edited and edited till 3.00 morning.... *yawn*

My wallpaper.(shape of moon is distorted caused by compression to fit in blogspot)

For those who don't have the knowledge on Photoshop may wonder how an image is edited, so I'll generously share it with you. Below are a few simple steps to create/edit a wallpaper.
(this is not a tutorial, but just simply giving a whole picture on the step-by-step processes)

STEP 1
Google it to get a background of the planet. Yeah, this one is a simple one. Plain and empty. But the original picture is dull so I've intensified its colour to yeild the result below.



STEP 2
Since it is so plain, why not add something else? My photo, A spaceship, rocket, or space junk? I think a moon is a better choice. So did I googled it. Placed it in next layer above the earth. It looks like this:



STEP 3
It looks nice with the moon. BUT, did you notice that the earth surface is kinda fake? My guess is: probably computer-generated. So I'll need to replace it with a real one. Again I googled to get a new picture, then I rotated it, stretched it over the surface and finally blend it with the ozones layers. (using feathered earaser)



STEP 4
However still the picture lack of something....the twinkle lil stars. So again I googled a picture of stars, then placed it as another layer on top, and set the layer's mode into "screen", which means appear as "lighting", while removing those which covers the earth and moon with a hard-edge earaser.


STEP 5
Still, unsatisfying, the moon don't look good anyway. So I've replaced it with a luminescent moon. To create the light spreading effect, simply styled the layer with "outer glow" with mode "screen". This is the final result:
NOTE: wallpaper needs high resolution images!





These are some of the posters and banners that I've did in the past...for the banner the Franciscan should had seen them.