New Cover Image Pt 1 Inspiration and making a nebula background

After researching on the internet for a few more impressive ideas I came across this tutorial. http://www.webdesign.org/photoshop/photoshop-basics/create-a-nebula-cosmolady-in-photoshop-tutorial.20321.html

The links for resources on the tutorial were all broken.
It became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to find the images as they had been removed for copy right reasons.
I would have to source my own images of nebula.

There was also 3d rendering in the tutorial for some 3d shapes to make the image seem more abstract and unreal.  I felt that this wouldn’t be required with my own image as I was going for a more classic movie poster feel.

The tutorial was good so decided to draw some inspiration from it. Along with these covers that so where im heading.

 

Firstly I started a new canvas sized 13cm by 18.2cm I set the resolution to 300 pixels per inch and the colour mode to CMYK .Then using the paint bucket tool filled that in with a black background.

I then placed the image named “cosmos xiii by redden” (layer named nebula 1) in the bottom of the page the image was then layer was duplicated.

 The image transformed (Ctrl+ Alt+ T) and filled around to fill the whole page. The blending option was changed to screen on these layers, this will lighten the image without losing the darkest areas or blacks. This blending option is commonly used to restore lost highlights when cleaning up old photographs or to clean up underexposure.

A new layer was created called Nebula 2and used to fill out the composition. In the top right of the screen I loaded in a photo from the NASA website Nebula Gabriela mistral. This was transformed and moved in to position.
The blending option was set to lighten for these layers as it wasn’t so important to preserve the dark areas.

Levels were then used (Ctrl +Alt + L ) to make colours more intense as the screen mode had lost some colour.

The next step was to create a layer mask for each of the Layers that had been made. This was done by selecting the layer and pressing the box with a circle in side on the bottom of the layers box.
 After selecting the layer mask.

Using brushes set with smooth edges and the opacity dropped down to 40%.
Making sure only the black  I removed the hard edges from the images. And used this to mask out clashing overlaps or restore parts of the image. This helped blend the images together.

It was important to use the layer masks as I wasn’t sure how much of each image I wanted to show through. And I wanted to be able to change my mind and go back and mask out or unmask bits as I saw fit.

I then Selected all layers (Ctrl + A) and (Ctrl +Shift +C) and pasted them on top of the other. The layers then merged them to one layer. The blending mode was then set to screen and layer mask selected.
The layer mask was then filled black and using the white brush with a low opacity  of about 20-30 % and soft edges to reveal the image  and highlights below.

Using the dodge tool with highlights selected set to about 20% with a changing brush size I brightened some areas. The adjustment layer was then selected to play with the hue saturation to really make some of the colours pop out.

The back ground was now completed.