"John W" wrote in message
I am trying to recreate an image similar to this one suitable for a 12×12 print:
http://members.cox.net/secacct234/earthclouds.jpg
I don’t know if there are any plugin filters that could do this, but if you are just using photoshop alone you may be in for a lot of low-opacity painting and just plain old patience and brush skills.
Personally I would get a soft-edge, low opacity (around 20%) brush and paint the main swirl in on several layers in several shades of pink and purple. Then I would play with the blending modes and transparency of these layers to see what effects I could get (try soft light, screen, overlay, and multiply in different variations).
Once you have the main swirl satisfactorily, you’re going to have to paint in low opacity white streaks for those wisps on another layer. You could then take the smudge brush and pull out the streaks into the curvilinear patterns you see on the example. Again, you’re going to have to play with the transparency to get the right look.
In order to get the clouds to look like they go both in front and behind your planet you will need to mask off the section of clouds that dissappears behind the horizon.
Finally there would be a whole lot of final touch-ups: blurring here and there, dodging and burning certain areas, saturating and desaturating certain areas, perhaps adjusting the levels and hue/saturation to get the look you want. The whole process might take you a couple of hours or beyond if you really want it to look like the example image.
I’d be interested myself to hear if anyone had quicker methods to obtain this because it’s a nice effect.
Good Luck
