• Author: Toby
• Date Added: Nov 30, 2006
• Tutorial Views: 37,277
• Rating: 4.67 out of 5
• Total Votes: 138

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This tutorial was derived from a Greg Martin Photoshop tutorial. Special thanks goes to Greg for allowing me to write this tutorial for Paint Shop Pro 9. Create an amazing realistic starfield with Paint Shop Pro. There are alot of great things to learn from this tutorial, give it a try and show me what you came up with.

Create a new document, size 400x400. Flood fill this with black. Create a new layer named "small stars" Flood fill this layer with black as well. Now add some "Noise" to the small stars layer Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Add Noise. Use the settings Gaussian 40% Monochrome.

To bring out the brighter stars and dim the darker ones we need to adjust the brightness and contrast. Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness/Contrast use the settings Brightness: 10 Contrast: 45. Things may look to dark right now but keep it this way for now.

Duplicate the "small stars" layer and name it "large stars" Layers > Duplicate. We are going to use the Brightness/Contrast again to really bring out the larger stars and hide the smaller ones Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness/Contrast use the settings Brightness: 20 Contrast: 60.

Click on your "Raster Deform Tool", make sure the "Mode" is set to Scale. Enter the following info Pivot-X: 200 Pivot-Y: 200 Position-X: -200 Position-Y: -200 Scale-X: 200 Scale-Y: 200. Set the Perspective's, Sheer, and Angle to zero. This will scale the "large stars" layer twice the size of your image and center it if using the image size 400x400. To make things easyer to see lets invert the "large stars" layer Adjust > Color Balance > Negative Image. Now go to Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Levels. Use the settings Channel: RGB Input Levels: 230, 1, 250 Output Levels: 0, 255.

You can invert the "large stars" layer back to normal Adjust > Color Balance > Negative Image. Also we need to scale it down so its just a bit bigger than your image size. So pick your "Raster Deform Tool" again and enter these settings Pivot-X: 200 Pivot-Y: 200 Position-X: -16 Position-Y: 16 Scale-X: -54 Scale-Y: -54. Set the Perspective's and Sheer to zero Angle: 180. Now to make both the "small stars" layer and the "large stars" layer visible, change the "large stars" layer properties to "Screen" Layers > Properties > Blend Mode: Screen.