BACK TO MAIN TIPS PAGE
Choose the selsct tool. In it's options choose eliptical, and set it to fixed size (same height and widht - a circle). The size should be a few pixels less than your image. In this example it is 296 pixels wide. Select a region at the (exact) middle of the screen. You can see if the selction is the exact middle, so don't worry about that.
Render clouds once (Filter>Render>Clouds), and then difference clouds over them (Filter>Render>Difference Clouds). You should have an image which should look like this:
Step #1
Now, to make it a planet, we need to give it a more spherical look. So, use the spherize filter (Filter>Distort>Spherize). Now the image look more like a rounf 3-D object:
Step #2
To make this a living world with water and stuff, we need to color it. To do so, change the mode to indexed color (Mode>Indexed Color).
Now we are going to color this image. First, we need to add water. Look at your image, the black areas are going to be the water, so decide until which leevl of gray you want the wtaer to be. (The threshold preview could help you decide that). Open the color table (Mode>Color Table). Choose (by dragging) the colors from black to the color you choosed before. A color selection dialof box opens. Choose the color of the deepest see you want (a dark shade of blue) and press OK. Now choose a little brighter version of the previous color, this would be the more shallow water. Now choose 6 colors beginig with the brightest shade of blue you made before. Press OK for the first dialoge box, this would leave the color as it is. For the second dialoge box, choose a bright shade of blue. This will be the water near the shore, so it should be very bright. Press ok and look at your image. it shouls look similar to this:
Step #3
Continue coloring the land. It should look like the color in a topographic map. Although the real colors of Earth are not the same of those of a map, but we are very used to see this method of coloring, instead the real colors of the land, so it will look quite good. Your planet should look like this:
Step #4
Change your mode to RGB (Mode>RGB Color), so you could make further adjustments to your planet.
Now we got the basic plant and we need to add an atmosphere and two ice poles.
First, let's put some clouds. Repeat the first 2 stages of creating th planet, so you'll have a sphere of clouds, only this
time, use the entire image for your circle. By doing so, the atmosphere will extend beyond the planet, as in real planets.
This is my new "planet" which i'll use for the clouds:
Step #5
Now, duplicate your clouds to a new window (Image>Duplicate). Go back to your clouds and load selection (Select>Load Selection). In the Load Selection dialoge box, choose the Intersect with Selection option, choose the black channel from the duplicated clouds. Now you have a selection of the clouds, according to their brightness. Copy that selection, change your window to your planet image, and paste it as a layer (Edit>Paste Layer). You can now change the opacity and mode if you want to, but Normal mode and 100% opacity will do just fine. Your plant now have an atmosphere, and should look like this:
Step #6
Now we are going to create the ice poles.
Start a new image, the same size as your planet's. Fill it with balck. Choose the Selection tool, and make it a rectangle again. Choose it to be the same width as the image's but only 1/10 in height. Choose the upper 1/10 of the image and fill it with white. Do so on the Lower 1/10. Deselct (Select>None), and crystalize your image (Filter>Pixelate>Crystalize). I used a cell size of 18, but you should use different values for different image sizes. Pixelate it again (Filter>Pixelate>Crystalize), but use a much smaller cell size (I used 3). Your image should look like this:
Step #7
Again, select a circle (it's size should be your planet's size). Copy it, and paste it as a layer in your planet image. Use the Screen Mode this time. The paste layer option, will paste the ice poles above your clouds, so move it to be between your planet and it's clouds. Your image should look like this:
Step #8