[an0n]

I was screwing around and this happened:



And I even managed to show some good practice and have everything in seperate layers, which is probably a first for me.

[Thorn]

GAH!
DEFAULT PHOTOSHOP FLARES OF DOOM!

[Rictor]

What is that like, four lens flares?

And God said unto them "Thou art My people, the Chosen of God, but if thou stray into darkness and make use the evil of lens flares, thou shalt be smoten. SMOTEN"

Err, looks good actually, but ease up on the lens flares. Did you do this by hand or with Glitterato?

[Turnsky]

i'd say by hand, Glitterato isn't capable of that..

[Rictor]

Two more things.

Try making the stars smaller. When you have huge stars like this, it just screams "low res". That, and the starts should be much less prominent, so that means maybe use fewer, of lower their brightness. Probably best to use fewer.

and also try going for a more unified colour scheme. If you take a look at some of the stuff that, say, Greg Martin does, it whole piece is usually dominant in one colour.

[an0n]

It's all PS defaults.

And it needed the lens-flares to detract attention from the curious uniformity of the lesser-stars.

And I know PS flares != Good, that's why I saved it before I added them. I'll replace them soon as I find something free that'll do decent ones.

Oh and big-flares = Necessary.

I'm now using this thing as the galaxy-map and the inhabitted systems need to stand out somewhat.

[Carl]

globby.

[Knight Templar]

Pretty.

[Drew]

you could have probably got better glares with PS's default zooms and filters.

[an0n]

I killed the flares and added some PhotoPaint lighting effects.

[Turnsky]

cool, looking like a stellar nursery

[StratComm]

That done with the Greg Martin tutorial?  It looks good, though the contrast is a bit more than I'd go for myself.  Maybe add in a layer of really dim stars in the back?

I did this using that tutorial, it works well but takes forever.  If that worked right, click the pic for the full version.

[Knight Templar]

an0n: You've been upgraded to: Beautiful.

[Singh]

where can I get this tutorial?

Oh yes, and nice starfield

[Xelion]

an0n that second one is looking better .

Originally posted by StratComm
I did this using that tutorial, it works well but takes forever.

It does now. With practice it will take less time, but thats the thing with art, its something carefully constructed over time

Originally posted by Singh
where can I get this tutorial?

http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tutorials.html

[an0n]

I'm at the point where I know if I try to make it any better I'll only end up ****ing it up, so I'm starting on the map elements of it.

[Rictor]

Alright, thats an improvement. I like the colours. Try adding some very subtle blue in the background, to replace all the black. It shouldn't stand out, but it would look better than just plain black.

Err, try using one of Lightspeed's nebula images (the red ones) as the background, if you have it in layers. Changing the colour of course.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Xelion
It does now. With practice it will take less time, but thats the thing with art, its something carefully constructed over time

You didn't click the link, now did you  It took forever because I did it with GIMP and because it's not just a 400x300 image.  The actual process is time consuming, but not terribly so.  It does tend to make really dense, orignal enough starfields though.

[Nico]

what's the weird thing under Tatcher ( )?

[Setekh]

Excellent effort. I do think the drop-off is a little exagerrated, though, a buttload of finer stars would work very nicely in the voids. But there's no problem if this is the style you prefer.