It looks good. Advanced Critique Encouraged...well... I would say the green looks good, but I'm not too sure how well it goes with the colour of the planet and the light in the misty parts(the green) may be a little to intense in some cases. For instance, the light in the top right may be a little too intense. Hope that helps you

Nice piece

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~Psilovibe

This one's quite impressive looking. Another thing I like is that you properly checked "advanced critique encouraged". Therefore, I don't have to kiss butt for three paragraphs to gain your favor before digging my teeth into the real meat of the critique. I can just go over what works, what doesn't, and what would.

A lot of things work in this image. First off, it caught my attention immediately. It doesn't look like another run-of-the-mill Greg Martin planet tutorial, something anybody with the motor skills of a Downs syndrome inflicted chimpanzee can do in fifteen minutes. This one has a lot of power to it, and the actual construction of the planet has proof of effort and intricate detailing throughout. The same applies to those celestial clouds. They have very good shape and flow to them. The gold vein effect on the dark side of the planet is very well accomplished. That should remain unchanged.

The star field looks a little weak in my opinion. The stars look too thin, and don't really cluster. I love images with very thick clusters of stars. The stars are also white, when in reality, they're a very bright blue. The light source doesn't seem to fit the environment. What I see is something like a close star shining through the green. If that was the case, I would think that the light source on the planet wouldn't be such a solid white, but would have a very subtle (SUBTLE!) touch of minty green. This would apply particularly on the clouds. The light source itself is also very intense. What it does is it blotches out that part of the canvas, taking a lot of weight off the planet itself.

Here's what you can do for the stars. First off, give them some color, and don't stick to just one shade of blue. Use several shades, like some cool greens or warm violets. Flat white stars are boring, and if these stars had greater clusters, they would also have more majesty in the image. For instance, in this [link] )/Binary-Birth(D).jpg image of yours, you have a denser star field with a good palette used throughout.

Once again, the clouds look really good, but they also look flat in their environment. If you were to create even more clouds, not nearly as potent as the ones already there, then place them accordingly so they get overlapped by the existent cloud masses, it would really benefit the sensation of depth to the scene. Don't even stop there, you can make very thin clouds wrapping around the planet itself for an effect that always manages to amaze me.

Again, I really like the effect of the gold vein on the planet. The glow works just right for that section. I'm looking at the clouds though, and they seem to be slightly off alignment. It's like they're angled differently than the actual surface of the planet.

The layout of the image is the last part. I see a fair bit of dead space in this image. I'm sure that if you were to create more clouds and cluster the stars to a greater extent, your scene would fill up. Yet another thing is that you can pretty much get rid of the top third of the image itself, and it really puts a great amount of emphasis on the gold vein. What I did was download the image into MS-Paint, scroll to the bottom, then push ctrl+F to view the image fullscreen (from the bottom) and though it cuts off the top portion, I realized that the top wasn't really that important (and that the bottom looks much better). It prioritizes the elements of the image, reduces the amount of distractions on the canvas, yet still conveys the same stylistic impression as when viewed at full screen. But then again, the light source would have to be moved down as well to act as a focal point, which might throw everything off...so who knows? It is entirely possible that such a course wouldn't be the right one, it is all up to your own discression. After all, you are the original artist.

Overall, a very spectacular work. It was worth the time to absorb and write about, because considering the "mass produced" feel of planet scapes on this website, it's a refreshing breath of summer breeze to see something as refined as this come along.

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_{Self-proclaimed Douche-Bag.}

You know, you could do something very similar, at least this good in quality, with some flaming pear plugins(glitterato and lunarcell). In 10minutes......

I checked out those filters. You're telling me that you can't tell the difference between this and that? Give photoshop's filter>render>clouds a try. I bet you'll like them too.

Woah... this is very powerful.. deep and majestic. I love the colous .. nice work!

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//: marco lüthy
[ Weblog | Gallery | Store ]

I don't mean using them as they are, but rather using them as a base, then working on those saves lots of hours.
You can tell the difference if someone has just played around with the filters, but not if someone actually uses their full potential.
Combine the filters with some homegrown effects, maybe some textures, or just paint cities or canyons, and we get a nonfilter looking piece, in half the time.

You can make really good planets and starfields if you use multiple layers and use the options well enough.
Just clicking the random button doesn't usually give very good results.

And the difference clouds have lots of uses. The sprites in this one are difference clouds [link]
They're low-res though. (lol, don't mind the planet, too low polys....)

Anyway, i think your piece is wonderful, so keep up the good work.

I'm hopefully going to offer another in-depth critique later, but for now, I have a few quickie comments -

Watch out for crisp lines on the planet's surface near the edges. They can often be seen in your peripheral vision as the planet's edge, and thus the planet won't look round.

Also, the planet's embossing in its lower left is somewhat obvious. I'd lower the opacities a bit - the goal of any filter is to add an effect without alerting the viewer that a filter was used.

Lastly, the starfield needs a lot of work. I'll touch on that more thoroughly later, but I will say that the two big problems are the blotchiness (big dense spots and big empty spots, with nothing in between) and the monochrome stars (realistic or not, tiny stars like that add to the piece in a non-intrusive, non-distracting way if they are properly colored to match the piece.

the planet is realy good the bg.. not----
i love the textures of the planet and the colors.. its realy nice....
the backgreound isnt making any justice to the rest of the piece...

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Fazer Fotografia é Escrever Poesia com a Luz .. ou de ver gajas nuas..

Making Photography is Writing Poetry with Light.. and seeing naked chicks..

Marco Matos

first of all, i love the new layout for you webiste. it rocks. and as for this peice i think its your best yet i love especially the planet. the texture and the clouds look awesome but the background looks kinda bad when you compare it to the planet but its still pretty good. maybe add more detail?