You're a comic character making your first journey into space. Let's say you're a character I came up with... Gadget Girl, and you and your alien companion have just finished your latest adventure and are taking in the fact that all the gravity controls on the space ship you're on have just been fried.

So, everything is floating around, and it's looking kind of fun, but wait... there's a window... where are the stars?

Sometimes star fields are done by inkers according to sketchy notes and "x"s drawn marked out by the penciler. Sometimes, along with clouds and other sky effects, they're added by the colorist. If you're the colorist, and have been given that awesome responsibility, here's one way that you could handle it.

Let's make some noise.

1.) In Photoshop, create an image 150 high by 150 pixels wide. Then, choose Edit > Fill..., and set the Content area to "Black" (the Blending Opacity:100% and Mode:Normal). The image size is arbitrary, and being used only for the purposes of this tutorial. Afterwards, experiment with bigger sizes for wider star fields.

2.) Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise... and set it to 35 for "amount". The noise that's created is good, but not quite bold enough yet, so you need to apply Image > Adjust > Auto Levels (Shirt + Ctrl + L) to the image. Next, choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and set the radius amount to .8. Now we have our raw material.

3.) Finally, go to Image > Adjust > Levels (Crtl + L). Set the input levels to 80, 1.00, 90. Suddenly, the blurry image becomes a crisp star field. Now, if you like, add a touch of color to the star field by setting the Channel drop down menu to "Green", and changing the first field in the Input Levels to 5.
After finishing this tutorial, feel free to experiment in this window by dragging around the filled and hollow arrows above the Output Levels area to achieve the exact star field look you want.

What you have now is a fine star field, and we could easily stop here, but space isn't just about a random speckle of white dots in the sky... there's all sorts of interesting phenomena to jazz things up. Let's try to help our star field look a little more exotic.

4.) Now, go to the "Channels" palette (found under the Windows menu) and create a new Channel by clicking on the "Create New Channel" button at the bottom of this window. Your new channel should be called "Alpha 1".
Choose Filter > Render > Clouds. These clouds are interesting, because they will always be different every time you apply them. Try re-applying this filter a few times (Ctrl + F to repeat the last filter). Do this until you get some nice dark shapes that have a decent snakish spread and doesn't bunch up too much into simple blobs (you'll see what we were looking for here as we go on, so feel free to come back to this step and do it over).

Again apply Auto Levels (Ctrl + Shift + L). After this, it's time to adjust levels again (Ctrl + L).

Once more , use your best judgement. I set my Input fields to 75, 1.00, 150. You want to get some solid snakes of black atmospheric disturbance. Invert this image (hit "Ctrl + I"), and you're almost all set. Before you leave the Channels window, you want to choose this as your selection. Either click the "Load channel as Selection" button at the bottom of this window, or choose Select > Load Selection, and set the Source: channel to "Alpha 1".

5.) Switch back to the Layers window and create a new layer, and (with the selection still on) fill this new layer with white. Deselect selection (Ctrl + D).

6.) Now if you have some large blotches of white that are a little too big, choose the ERASER, and set it to AIRBRUSH mode are rid your self of them at your descretion. Set this Nebula layer to "preserve transparency", and choose the normal airbrush, and start coloring your nebula using some purples, violets, red, and yellows. After it's nice and pretty... your pretty much done!

Note: To all the science buffs out there cringing at my color suggestions for nebulas... "--B-But the only elements that make that color are Xeon 234b and Benzine p39, how inaccurate!" Please, don't hesitate to correct me!

7.) Did I say done? Definitely don't hesitate to add any additional bells and whistles, like a sun and a gratuitous lens flare or two (I trust your judgement). Ciao!

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