Lance McKnight

Bolt, how is this different from the gradient plug-in from KrisVDM's pack?

Another tip is to create an alpha mask. Make two layers. Make the bottom layers black, and then on the 2nd layer, draw a rectangular selection with desired dimension, and fill in the selection with white. Flatten the image and save it as a mask.png file. Now all you need to do "cropping" the picture is to run alpha mask and load the mask.png file. Hope this tip might help.

"Violet" added to 1st page, and added a link to a much larger version. It's a big 'un as well. Software used - Apophysis 7X with random Foci as the only variation of the fractal, MyPaint to add color, lights, and shadow, and finally, PDN for the planet, layers blending, and some post production work. Enjoy.

You have some real nice stuff going on. By the way, I added you to my dA watch list so I can see your fine works.

I believe something called Conditional Hue/Saturation might do the trick. Not sure as I have never done that way using the plug-in. Look for it in the Plug-in Index.

USA! USA! USA! Beating Italy in an exhibition soccer match is sweet!

Or just using two tone of grey (dark and light), and make two layers (Dodge and Burn) respectively, and use the paint brush. May have to use Gaussian blur a bit to soften up the edge.

Wow, this just made my day, after reading about USA winning their first soccer match against Italy. Seriously? Primer? Go and read Consumer Guide for the best product to buy, that's what I would do.

Unfortunately, PDN doesn't have those tools available. Workaround is available here.

I have to agree with pyro on this one.

Actually, Goon, I found that using Highlight plug-in works. I think I didn't run the brightness/contrast to increase the brightness of the "flare." Thanks for the tips on the planet. Delpart was saying the same thing with the planet's scale. I'll be keeping those tips in mind. Another thing, I did try to switch between GIMP and PDN, but no dice. Finally, I decided to kick GIMP off my computer permanently. I do have MyPaint, and I think I'll try to use the brush system in that software to do some work.

I once went in for a job interview with a guy who owned a graphic design business, and he told me he was color blind. So how did he get around that? By having his clients tell him the color values they want to use, and he did that. I was amazed. The reason why he told me about that was to see what I would do to get around my deafness in daily interaction with clients. Despite my best overture, it wasn't to be, but the fact that the guy had a business and was able to work around his blindness is amazing.

Eh?

I forgot to mention I had a much larger work. I reduced the original size so I could have it hosted on Photobucket, but the much larger piece actually contained more details, and it's available at dA. However, being generous sort I am (I know some are snorting at that thought), I'm going to link to it - take a peek. WARNING: The size is 3500x1500. You have been warned. The flare is actually created with the Highlight plug-in, it took me some tinkering with the setting and using a grey color (for some reason grey works the best) I think I got close to how the tutorial had it. No blending mode was used since the color took care of it. I also neglected to mention that there is a fractal inside the color of the nebula and it was created with Apophysis 7X. I am actually inspired to create another space scene. It's starting to become addictive!

I forgot to mention that this tutorial was the inspiration behind this piece. I largely followed his tutorial until it got to the planet portion, and I just went off on a tangent and created my own. Thanks for your comments though. If PDN had better Flare I would be more than happy with it, but it is what it is.