Light Bulb Solar System

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Overview: This light bulb solar system image is my favorite creation to date. It combines simplistic subjects, realistic shadowing, surrealism, and the knowledge I've learned in Photoshop to create a truly unique product. It displays that planets of our solar system revolving around a hanging bulb, creating a miniature surreal image of a planetary system on a much grander scale. 

Process: The process used to create this image was repetitive, but also explored new techniques which I had not tried previously. First, I used a PNG of the solar system and duplicated it several times, then I proceeded to mask each layer so that only the single desired planet of each layer was showing. With this done I arranged the planets around the bulb to get a basic layout to work off of (During this I also masked Jupiter behind the bulb). Next, I used the perspective warp tool on a few of the planets to help add a sense of depth and to make it appear like they were revolving around the bulb. This is why Neptune (Top right) is an ellipse rather than a perfect circle. With the planets arranged I then duplicated several of the planets, reduced their exposure to the minimum they could be, added a Gaussian blur, and finally arranged the shadows so that some planets would appear to cast a shadow on the wall. This made it seem as if some planets were behind the light and therefore cast shadows and others were in front of the light and therefore did not. This process was then repeated when I added a few asteroids and a single meteor in order to fill in the scene to add more detail. To bring the image together I duplicated the bulb layer and placed it over everything with a reduced opacity (This added a subtle coloration effect to unify the image). I also used the burn brush on planets such as Saturn and Earth to increase the shadow in order to fit with the perspective I wanted to achieve. Finally, to fill in the blank sections of the wall I used a space brush to add the scattered stars on the dark edges of the image. This added a final touch that helped fill in the image while also added to the space theme.

For the Future: Looking back on this image, I think I would have been much more tentative with using the perspective warp tool. It's a very fine line between making the image more realistic and making it seem ridiculous, a line I think I tread to close to. Preferably I would have made it so the viewer would not even think twice about perspective, instead just having them take in the detail the way they would in a natural scene. However, I think I may have missed the mark in some facets of this image. The way to improve upon this is to practice creating composites that involve the perspective warp tool so that I can learn to utilize it better to achieve my aims. 

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