How to Make a Realistic Looking Moon Photograph in Photoshop

in this tutorial i will show you how to make a very convincing photoshop image i even got a few people to beleive it was real!

Make new layer. Name it Moon and select Elliptical Marquee Tool. Then make selection of a circle area near the top middle of the page. Size near to 100x100 pixelzz.

Note: To draw a perfect circle, press shift while selecting.

Hit "x" key to change foreground to background color and set foreground color to #F0FAFF. Then fill selection on the current new layer with this color. To draw the moon's surface, select Filter > Artistic > Sponge and adjust the following settings to the image

Note: You can set your own values if you chose diferent sizes. Moreover you should try to set your own values because with this filter you may get different results with the same values. Just try to reapply this filter until you get the proper result. After applying this filter you can Undo [Ctrl+Z] this action and then press [Ctrl+F] to select last used filter once again.

use birghtness/ contrast to make the moon look a little brighter.

to make the moon more realistic
add some blur by going to filter> blur> blur more

then set the layerstyle to these settings

to make the sea you will first need to make a new layer and fill it with your background colour
then go to filter> render> fibers
and click randomise a few times until you get something like this

click Edit> Free Transform right clikc on your selection and choose roatate 90 cw

then move the fibers until yours looks something like this

click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and add some blur to the layer. Radius must be about 1.0 pixelzz.

Change the blending mode of the sea layer to Overlay and press the Add Vector Mask button:


Select the Gradient Tool and fill the layer from the center of "water" to the top as shown in the image

to draw stars, use the Reticulation filter from the Sketch group. Create a new layer. click the Rectangular Marquee Tool and select the area where you want place your stars (about 1/4 of the page at the top). Set your foreground color to white and fill the selection. Now you may deselect [Ctrl+D]. Note that background color must stay our dark sky color. Select Filter > Sketch >Reticulation and use these settings shown in the pciture

After pressing the Add Vector Mask button, choose the Gradient Tool and fill from the top to the bottom of current stars layer the same as we did with sea layer but in the opposite direction. Drag the layer to change its order next to the background layer under all other our layers and here are the stars!

Create another layer. Select the Brush Tool and set its size to 9pixellz. Hold the shift key and draw a vertical line from the bottom of the moon to the center of your sea. Now press [Ctrl+T] and stretch it out like this:

select Filter > Blur >Gaussin Blur with something about 100pixelz radius or less. As a result, you've got the soft radiance of the moon

Create the final new layer. Select the Brush Tool and draw a small vertical line with the previous settings (9pixellz) like this:

apply wind; filter> stylize> wind

use these settings

do the whole wind thingy from the oposite direction and then you need to transform it so that it is wider towards the horizon.

next apply: filter> blur> motion blur

and use these settings

make is smoother by going
filter> blur> gaussian blur
use theses settingseses

Place this layer under the "Sea" layer and change master opacity to 35%

vote for me and i wont eat you.
(not that i'll eat you anyways)

if you make this then dont forget to show me how you did!
your should look something like this: