Tutorial: How to make a moon.

This is a tutorial that shows you how to make a realistic-looking moon in a few simple steps, only using Adobe Photoshop 7.

Create a new document 400x400 pixels, and make the background black. Create a new layer and name it "Moon". Make a new circular selection with the circle marquee tool while holding down "shift". Make the selection about 70% of the imagesize.
Now it is time to choose in what color you like your moon to shine in. I would like the moon to shine in a bright yellowish tone so I then choose one lightyellow tone as my foreground color and one dark as my background color. I used the following colors. Foreground: D8D6B4 Background: 909071 Next choose Filter > Render > Clouds Make sure that you dont get too much of the dark tone on the surface. Just keep repeating the cloudfilter until you are satisfied.
Next it is time to make the suface more moon-like by adding dark spots. First make sure that you still have the moon selected with our marquee selection, we are not going to deselect just yet. Press "D" to reset the colors Switch from Layers to Channels. Create a new channel (Alpha 1). Select the new channel and then choose Filter > Render > Clouds. Once again we prefer bright colors, in this case white. Just keep repeating the the cloudfilter until you have about 70% white.
Next choose Filter > Render > Difference Clouds Hold down "Ctrl" and click the "Alpha 1" channel. Only the bright areas will be selected. Keep this selection.
Now it is time to choose a fitting brush to paint the "moon-spots" with. Choose a soft Airbrush, about 200 and set the opacity to 30%. Now we need to set a texture to the brush to make it look more spot-like. Toggle the Brushes Palette (click the button marked in the image below). Set the texture of the brush to the "Cloud pattern".
Switch back from Channels to Layers and select the "Moon" layer. Make sure that you still got the selection we made earlier. Now we only need to paint the spots by using the "cloudbrush". Move from one side to another until we covered the whole surface. One or maybe two strokes on the same spot should be sufficient.
Now it actually start looking something like the moon as we know it, but we are still not finished. Hold down "Ctrl" and click the "Moon" layer to select it. Choose Filter > Distort > Sphereize, set the amount to 100%. Repeat this action for an additional 40%.
Now we are almost finished, we just have to add some glow, so that the moon wont look so lifeless. Now go to Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow. Follow and fill in the settings as shown below. I used FFFFE1 for the glow color.
Do the same once again but this time choose Layer > Layer Style > Inner Glow. And once agian follow the settings as shown. Even here I used FFFFE1 for the glow color.
Thats it!!! Here is the results. I believe it looks quite realistic. And if the the color dont do it for you, just change the colors to a blueish tone and you will get a more distant look. Enjoy!

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