For this tutorial you'll need the two stock photos included, one should be a blonde girl and the other should be a blue sky. You'll also need the star and moon brushes from Digital Wonderland.

Before you start this tutorial please go to Window > workspace > Reset Palette Locations so we can make sure we're on the same page. :)

1. We're going to start with the background. Go to Image > Adjustments and click Desaturate. The photo should be black and white now.

2. Go to Image > Adjustments and click Auto Contrast. The sky should be almost completely black while the clouds should remain the same shades of grey/white.

3. The rest is pretty simple. For the stars and moons I used Digital Wonderland , and I believe there are Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro versions of each. Just make sure you're using your brush tool at an opacity of 100%. I would recommend making a new layer (Layer > New > Layer) to put your stars and moons on in case you decide you don't like some of them or you change your mind. If you'd rather paint your own moon using Photoshop textures, keep reading. If you're happy with what you've got, skip the next section.

Painting the Moon

On "Stellar" I just used brushes, but if you'd like to you can paint your own moon using Photoshop textures and the dodge and burn tools for shading.

1. Go to your Marquee tools and hold down on the bottom right hand corner until a submenu comes up. Choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Open up the photograph of the sky we just finished working on and go to Layer > New > Layer. Pick a spot on your sky and use the Marquee to make a circle.

2. Go to Edit and click Fill. In the window that pops up, go to the drop down box underneath Contents and choose Pattern. The next dropdown box will become available, and you can pick premade Photoshop textures. Pick the one you like best. Make sure the Opacity is at 100% and the Blending mode is normal and click okay. You should have something like this

3. Now to make the moon look more round, go to Filter > Distort > Spherize.

The edges will be a little rough so go ahead and use the blur tool to soften them a bit. You should use a fairly small brush for this as if you don't you'll mess up the textures on your moon. The brush I used was 13 Px.

4. The last part will be to use the dodge and burn tools to add lightness and darkness to your moon. I use a fairly large brush for this part since it makes it easier. I suggest you play with the tools and their exposure levels to get it exactly how you want. Don't be afraid to play around with it.

Skin

1. Time to open up the photo of the blonde girl. Her skin is already very pale, so you'll only need to go over it once with the dodge tool's Exposure set between 45-50%.

2. Once you've gone over all her skin once, click on the bottom right corner of the dodge tool and click sponge. The mode should be desaturate and I set the flow to mine at 100%, but you can change that if you want. I used a large brush, 100 px, and went over everything once except for her eyes. It's okay if you get her eyelashes. I went over her eyelids several times in order to make the makeup black later on.

The Eyes

1. Go back to the dodge tool with the same exposure and get a medium sized brush. I used a 35px. I made the lightest part of her eyes around her pupils and left the edges darker, but you can do whatever you like with them, it's completely up to you.( View image )

2. Next I use the burn tool with a size 17 px brush and I go around the edges of the eye. Hold it down, don't let go(!) and go around the edge of the colored part once. ( View image )

3. I used the dodge tool on the white part of the eyeball to make sure it's actually white.

The Makeup

1. Select the burn tool and get a brush size of about 45 px (smaller or larger if you like). I go around the outside of the eye once, getting all the lashes and I let it touch the coloured part of the eye just a little bit along the top eyelid. Once that's done, I go over the top lid a couple more times and make it completely black, then I go along the bottom lashes a couple times to make it nice and dark. Then I just click around underneath the eye to make it look like the makeup is running a bit. Don't get too carried away because there really isn't THAT much makeup on one eylid, so if you have it running down her entire cheek it may not look very realistic. ( View image )

2. Do the same to the opposite eye, and you're done! If you'd like to make the lips a bit darker, go over them with the burn tool until you're satisfied. I also burned the fingernail a bit ( View image )

The Hair

1. First I went over the hair on the stock photo with the smudge brush set at a size of 65 px. Try to keep it going in the same direction as the hair, as we're not trying to change the shape of it, we're just trying to make it smoother so we can blend in new strands later. ( View image )

2. That might have taken a few tries but practice makes perfect! Now I go over it a couple times with the dodge tool set at a size of around 65 px or maybe a little bigger. You can also use the burn tool to add some variation to the hair colour. ( View image )

3. Select the sponge tool again and go over the hair once with a flow of 100% and Mode set to desaturate. The hair should be different shades of light blonde and grey now. ( View image )


4. Add a new layer (Layer > New > Layer).

5. For the next part you might want to resize your image a little bit or zoom out. Use the Eyedropper Tool to select a color in the existing hair that you like. Make it the foreground colour. select the paint brush tool and get a brush size of 1 (Should be at the very top of the list). This part can be a bit tricky, but once you get the hang of it it's easy, and don't be too perfect about it because hair is NEVER perfect. There will always be a few strands out of place no matter what so just relax and get it to go in the general direction you want it in. I've found the trick to this is to click and hold down outside of the thin black box surrounding the picture. As fast as you can pull down to the bottom of the screen. If you do it too fast the line will break and if you don't do it fast enough the line will become bumpy and rough, and that's exactly why it's tricky. But once again, practice makes perfect and if you keep trying a couple times you'll get it.

6. Keep doing that with different colours and eventually you should have something that looks like this: ( View image )

Don't be afraid to get a bit crazy with it and bring it across the face. Once we get done you'll still be able to see the work you've done underneath the hair (as long as you don't make huge solid chunks of hair, that is!).

7. Now go to Filter > Blur > Blur and click it once. Go back to Filter and at the very top will be Blur. Click it once. Now your hair will look kind of like this: ( View image )


8. Next go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Make the angle -90 and the distance is up to you. The less distance the less windy it will look, the more distance the more windy and etc. I used 18 for mine.
( View image )

The Tears

Ah, the hardest part. Make sure you do NOT flatten the image until you are done with this part or you'll never be able to make the tears look right since the hair will be in the way.

1. Go to the layer with the stock image on it. Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to make a selection that goes down her entire cheek. Make some parts of it skinny and some parts of it fatter than others. Go to Edit > Copy and then Edit > Paste. A new layer will appear and the small line of skin will be on it.

2. Use the Magic Lasso Tool to select everything OUTSIDE of the tear. Go to Select > Inverse and the tear will be selected again.

3. Select the dodge brush and use a small size to make 'highlights' in the tears. Now do the same with the burn tool, but making dark spots now. ( View image )

4. Once you have something that looks similar to that, select the smudge brush and use a small size to smudge the edges of the tears and make them blend into the skin a little better. This also is tricky and I cannot really tell you how to do it because it depends on the shape and amount of shading in your tears. Tears also tend to get quite large where they hang off your face just before falling down, so you should make sure to smudge it so it looks like it's just barely hanging there, and make the hanging tear bigger than the rest of the 'trail' of tears. (I hope that makes sense!) ( View image )

5. Do the same to the other cheek, or cheat like I did, duplicate the layer, go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal, trim the tear up using the lasso tool, change it's shape a little with the smudge brush and there you have it! Two perfect and life-like tears.

Paste in the Background

Alright, I hope you haven't flattened anything because I didn't tell you to yet! Go to the sky that you edited and copy it. Go back to the girl and go to the background layer. Paste the sky on, and trim off anything that over laps on the girl (Turn down the opacity to see the outline of the hair on the stock photo, not the hair you painted). Smudge or blur it to match up with the girls hair, flatten the layers, and there you have it, your very own Stellar!

Wait a second!

If you want to get the extra 'sparkle' in her eye, overlay your sky (with the stars painted on) and cut out the areas outside the colored part of the eye. That should give it the sparkle, and if you want more just use Digital Wonderland brushes to add some more stars. Also note that I had to shrink my sky quite a bit to get the sparkles as dense as they are in her eyes.

Final image