Space and Science Fiction Tutorials

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Former editor in chief of Designinformer. More about Jad ↬

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As promised, here are some amazing outer-space tutorials for your learning. This is part 2 of the “Out of This World” series. I’m sure that you have seen some of these tutorials before, but hopefully, you will find a few that are totally new. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and choose a few of these tutorials and try them out for yourself.

As promised, here are some amazing outer-space tutorials for your learning. This is part 2 of the “Out of This World” series. I’m sure that you have seen some of these tutorials before, but hopefully, you will find a few that are totally new. So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and choose a few of these tutorials and try them out for yourself. Be sure to check out the following articles:

Tips About Outer Space Design

After you have tried out a few tutorials, then it will be a lot easier to start creating your own outer-space designs. Here are a few tips:

  1. After you try these tutorials, try experimenting with them. If it involves a filter, mess around with the different settings so you can see if you can come up with something different. You can also play around with the colors, fonts, textures, and other elements of the design.
  2. Try combining the different tutorials into one design.
  3. Don’t overdo it. If you took a look at the examples that I showed you on the first part of the series, you will see that the designs aren’t overdone and the elements and the effects are just right.
  4. Submit your work to the Design Informer Flickr group. After we get enough submissions, we will try to showcase the best designs every month. This is a great way for you and your designs to get some exposure.

Let’s go ahead and view 32 stunning, outer space tutorials that will help you create designs that are totally out of this world.

Planets, Nebulas, and Outer Space Scenes

Planets, galaxies, nebulas, comets, asteroids, lighting effects, textures, shiny objects, and a lot more elements are always good to have in your outer space designs. I have gathered up some tutorials for you to learn how to create these and implement them in your designs.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a realistic looking outer space image with your own home made galaxy. Without using any stock photos or any material at all besides Photoshopís filters, effects, and blending modes you will create a vibrant and lifelike creation you can use for numerous applications.

Outer Space

Photoshop Space Tutorial

The techniques that you learn in this tutorial will show you how to create a very nice outer space scene.

Space Tutorials

Create an Amazing, Extreme Space Background in Photoshop

This tutorial will show how to create this amazing, extreme outer space background entirely in Adobe Photoshop. You will learn a few things about creating lights as well as blending modes. This effect can be very useful in designing numerous things as well.

Extreme Space

Really cool Eclipse Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, Fabio will show you how he created the Abduzeedo’s footer. Besides, the design is inspired by the amazing work of James White, so I highly recommend you to check his work out.

Eclipse

Every Photoshop tutorial writer should have a space explosion effect in their arsenal. It’s kind of like a right of passage. This is Andrew’s (My Ink Blog) interpretation of a space scene. The fun part about working with a space scene, is that you can let your imagination go crazy. Please use this tutorial as a guide, but don’t feel limited by it. It’s by experimenting and playing with your own techniques that you’ll learn the most, and create something unique.

Awesome Space

Fiery Photoshop Space Explosion Tutorial

Illustrating scenes from the final frontier can make for some beautiful work. In this tutorial, Collis will walk you through creating a spectacular space scene featuring two planets colliding. Strap yourselves in, Photoshoppers!

Explosion

Space Scene Design in Photoshop

In this photoshop tutorial you will create a very unique space scene. Using a variety of different techniques, you will accomplish this awesome effect.

Space Scene

Space Lighting Effects in 10 Steps - Photoshop Tutorial

In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to create a space scene with some nice Lighting Effects. Oh, and you can do this all in 10 easy steps.

Space Lighting Effect

Aurora Borealis Effect

In this tutorial, learn how easy it is to create the Aurora Borealis effect.

Aurora Borealis

Retro Geometric Vectors in Space with Illustrator and Photoshop

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an abstract image for a poster using Illustrator and Photoshop. You will do all the vectors and shades in Illustrator then in Photoshop, you will give the image a nice retro style using some textures and brushes.

Shapes

Photoshop Quick Tip: Making a Planet

I know a lot a people think it must take hours to make a planet and it’s too much work to do it, well in some cases yes, but in this tutorial, Fabio Sasso will show you how to make a simple Planet in Photoshop that should take less than 10 minutes and it’s very useful to implement in other images.

Planet

Easy Space Scene

Learn how to create a space scene by playing with some filters and blending as well. The whole effect will not take you more than 20 minutes, and the end result is really impressive, very inspired on the Snow Leopard space theme design of the CD box.

Space Scene

Easy Star Light in Photoshop

You will create a composition from scratch first in Illustrator where we will play with shapes and the Blend Tool. After that in Photoshop, you will add the light effects and the pattern overlay.

Star

Very Easy Heroes Eclipse

In this excellent tutorial, learn how to create a nice eclipse effect using only Photoshop. You will add a texture in the end just to give that retro feel to the image.

Heroes

Advance Glow Effects

In this tutorial, you are going to create some really sharp-looking glow effects using a combination of layer styles, the Pen Tool and Color Blending. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you’ll pick up some tips you didn’t know before.

Glow

Colorful Light Effect

You will learn how to create a super easy but at the same time beautiful light effect by following this tutorial. It was based of an Xperia Sony cellphone advertisement.

Lights

Out of This World Type Effects

Here are some incredible typography effects that you can apply to your work to really make your designs out of this world.

Design a Rocket-Powered Retrofuturistic Digital Illustration

Retrofuturism is a topic that has always fascinated Alex Beltechi. In this tutorial, he will go through the steps of recreating this style. After making the 3D typography in Illustrator, you will use Photoshop to create an out-of-this-world digital illustration on the topic of space exploration.

Explore

3D Type Explosion

In this tutorial, they will show you how to create a good 3D type explosion with Adobe Illustrator, Cinema 4D and Adobe Photoshop. You will use basic tools to make this artwork.

Extinction

Meteor Text Effect

In this tutorial, Fabio of Abduzeedo will show you how to create a fire effect similar to when a spaceship or comet enters the earth’s atmosphere. The image that you will be creating is inspired by a Nike Ad that he saw a long time ago.

Meteor

A Slick Supernatural Text Effect

In this tutorial, you will be creating a smoky night effect on text to give it an eerie supernatural sort of feel. It’s a good exercise in using the Wave distortion filter.

Supernatural

Outer Space Text Effect

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create this cool-looking, outer-space Tron text effect, all entirely in Photoshop. You will be learning some new tricks as well, so go ahead and follow along. I wrote this tutorial some time ago on my old blog.

Outer Space

How to Create a Gorgeous Glassy Text Effect

This text will be created using a series of shapes with different transparency and color effects.

Glassy

How to make a Typographic, Retro, Space Face

In this tutorial, they will show you how to make a typographic face by using simple techniques. Using the Brush Tool and experimenting with light, you will get this amazing Typographic Space Face that looks like it’s created by letters and an amazing explosion.

Typography Space Effect

In this tutorial, Barton will walk through the steps he used to create this illustration to bring alive the word “collide.” This tutorial will cover: extruding text; displacement maps; the explosion deformer in Cinema 4d; as well as unique color enhancing techniques in Photoshop. You will also learn about various layer modes applied in Photoshop for great light effects.

Collide

Design a Retro Futurism Space Scene

Learn how to design a retro-futuristic space scene, using a variety of lighting effects and photo manipulation.

Retro Futurism

Create a New Retro Text Effect in Photoshop

Textured work with a vintage feel is still very popular, but more recently it’s the ‘new retro’ style that’s captured the imagination. The general idea is to create a vision of the future… from the past. This effect is good for all sorts of projects, flyers, websites, posters. It works particularly well with music based projects. This tutorial will take you through the motions for type.

New Retro

Create a Layered Glowing Text Effect

In this tutorial, you will create this effect using very basic Photoshop tools and layering effects. This tutorial is simple enough for a beginner to understand, but I should warn you that in this tutorial there ends up being over 60 active text layers, which will require a heavy use of your computer’s memory. Go ahead and jump into this tutorial and layer some glowing text.

Glowing

Colorful Glowing Text Effect in Photoshop

It’s a wondeful little style that could easily be integrated into any dark graphic design where some upbeat text is needed. This tutorial is perfect for adding some nice, glowing text to any space scene. Brilliant tutorial by David Leggett of Tutorial9.

Colorful

How to Quickly Create a Stylish Retro Text Effect

In this tutorial, you will be designing a cool retro text effect, which is growing more and more popular in today’s design. Today you will learn how to use the Perspective tool to create depth and how designers can use default gradients in unusual ways!

Stylish

Create a Trendy Galactic Poster Design in Photoshop

Galactic space scenes are a popular theme for digital art, they’re packed full of texture and vibrant colour, which are two ingredients of an awesome design! Using Photoshop’s blending modes along with a mix of textures and brushes, get lost in space and create an abstract cosmos poster design.

Chemical Imbalance

Amazing Video-Game Text Style in Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to create a text effect in Photoshop based on the DVNO clip by Justice and of course some 8 and 16 bits video game opening screens. You will play basically with some basic filters like Gaussian Blur, also with Blend Modes to the light effects.

Video Game

80’s Style Text Effect

In this tutorial, Fabio will show you how to create a very nice text effect inspired by the colors and some light effects used in the work of a great digital artist who uses the name Empire.

80's

So which tutorial did you find interesting? Which one are you planning to try and follow? Please leave your thoughts below.

Well, thanks for viewing and if you liked this post, please stumble, moo, blend, float, digg and bump it. I would really appreciate it you retweeted it as well so more people can see it. You can follow me on twitter by clicking here.

Oh, and one last thing, for our Ask the Expert series next week, we will be interviewing someone who is definitely an expert at these types of designs. :)