1) First off, you need to have a texture map ready to work with, I’d suggest making a 4000x4000 texture because it will get pixelated, so you will have to scale it down later on.



Basically, what you need to do is combine a bunch of textures together. Try experimenting with different blending modes, thay way everything flows well.


2) Alright, now that you’ve got your texture map ready, it’s time to morph it into a planet. Select the elliptical marquee tool, and put your mouse cursor on the top left corner of your screen, press and hold the shift key and drag your cursor to the bottom right corner. This is what you should see.




3) Now, press CTRL+C to copy the selected area. Click File-New to create a new working space (make sure you put the aspect ratio 1000 pixels higher, so if your planet texture is 4000x4000 then put 5000x5000). Press CTRL+V to paste the selected area into the working space. You should see your selected circle. Time to turn it into a sphere! With the layer selected, click Filter-Distort-Spherize and set it to 100. Use the filter 2 times. This is what you should get :