Experiencing a beautiful starry night is a mere dream, but Photoshop can do anything. Remember? Witness this beautiful view and create stars in dark using Photoshop. It will take just a few seconds, and you will see a mesmerising night sky filled with twinkling stars.
Let’s start!
Step1: Initial stage
Open an image in Photoshop with the night sky and make a new layer pressing Ctrl+N / Command+N and name it “Star”.
Step2: Add Noise
Select the “Star” layer in the layer panel and go to edit column in the top panel. After this find the fill option in the list which appears on the screen. As you will click on the fill option, a box will appear.
You have to set the colour “Black” in the content and leave the blending mode and opacity untouched. As we have selected the Black colour, it will result in changing the screen black.
As the window turns to black colour as we press OK, now it’s time to add noise to the window.
To apply noise go-to filters>Noise>add noise.
As we have applied noise to the black layout, it will give an illusion of stars. Now set the amount in between 130-180% and set the distribution to Gaussian blur. At the end select the monochromatic option below and press OK.
To soften the sharp edges of the noise, I will add a Gaussian blur to the layer. For this first select filter>blur>Gaussian blur. Before closing the box set the radius of the blur at 0.5pixels which will soften the sharp edges.
Step3: Make the noise hidden
As we are almost creating the stars, let’s take a look at the original picture. For this, we have to hide the stars layer by clicking on the visibility icon to the left of the panel.
Now it’s time to select the area in the image to add stars. As the image showcases a night sky above a city, I am selecting the sky area with the Selection tool in the toolbox. I am using the magic wand; you can also use the lasso tool in Photoshop.
After selecting the area, I will make the star layer visible and add a layer mask to the layer. This will give a look like this.
Doesn’t it look clumsy? Yes. There is a lot more do.
Step4: Create stars
To make the noise look like stars, I will reduce the noise by adjusting the levels. At the bottom of the layer panel, select the option of “Add adjustment layer”. Now as the list appears to select the option, “Levels”. Before moving ahead to create the stars, an option of USE PREVIOUS LAYER AS CLIPPING MASK will appear on the screen. This option will prevent any changes in the original image, and the changes will remain to the layer “Stars”.
After this, I will reduce the level of noise to make the sky look realistic. As the level of noise is adjusted, I will change the blending mode of the layer to screen.
Step5: Add colour to the stars
Now again I will go to the add adjustment layer to adjust the amount of hue and saturation. I am setting the hue to 200% and saturation to 15%.
After this to make the stars look natural, I will select the gradient tool from the toolbar on the left. I am selecting the foreground to transparent gradient for the task. Before dragging the cursor, I will change the foreground colour to black and background colour to white.
And you’re ready to see a beautiful starry night sky just like this.
The final result.
