Today's Image: Composite "Sun Behind Earth"

Good morning everyone and welcome back to Impacted Images. This is a special image for today, my newest composite "Sun Behind Earth."


All the elements in the scene were created in Photoshop CS5.

To start off, I made the background by painting white dots on a layer, then duplicating and resizing them. This created the starry background.

Next, I created planet Earth by using Photoshop's "3D Object from Layer" command. I chose the sphere and changed the texture to a satellite image of Earth. This created a 3D Earth-like planet.

I then used the Lens Flare filter on a separate layer and chose the 35mm preset. However, the lens flare was on a black background, so I moved the Underlying Layer slider in the Blending Options a little to the right. I also erased some of the remaining black with a large, soft eraser.

I made a copy of the earth layer and darkened it to set the backlighting. The sun is just a white circle with Box Blur applied.

To make the sun rays, I painted several rays of white and then used the Polar Coordinates filter to rotate them around the sun. A few adjustments of Free Transform and Skew, and the image was complete.

Here is the complete composite:

"Sun Behind Earth"

Thank you very much for visiting Impacted Images. I will post more images soon.