You may read many kind of tutorials about creating planets, however in this photoshop tutorial, I will show you some techniques to design a lava planet. Even this planet is looked more in comic or manga style but the result is beautiful, and you can use it for various kind of projects.

Step 1: Create a new file with a dimension of 800X800 pixels. Create a new layer, then use Elyptical Marquee Tool to Draw a Round Shape from the center of your canvas.

Step 2: Now that you’re on the second layer with the round shape selected. Hit D to turn the Foreground and Background color to Black and White. Then select Filter/Render/Difference Clouds.

Now when the effect is applied, you may hit Ctrl+F 2 or more time to increase the effect.

You should have something similar to this one.

Step 3: Hit Ctrl+L to turn adjust the Level of the image. The input should be the same as the image below.

Step 4: Now select Filter/Sharpen/ Unsharp Mask with the following figures:

Amount : 500%
Radius: 3.0
Threshold: 15

Step 5: Now to make your planet more realistic, select Filter/Distort/Spherize with the amount of 100%.

Now do it again, but this second time, the amount is only 50%. Below is what it should look like.

Step 6: Now we’re going to add some color to it by select Image/Adjustment/Color Balance.

The following figure should be put in.

Shadows : +100 | 0 | -100
Midtones: +100 | 0 | -100
Highlights: +70 | 0 | -15

If you don’t want it to be a lava planet, you may then hit Ctrl+U to change the color of the planet.

Step 7: Now select Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask. But this time with different figure:

Amount : 300%
Radius: 3
Threshold: 15

Here’s the final outcome of your planet.

Hit Ctrl+D to deselect it.

Step 8: Create a new layer under the planet’s layer. Now follow this tutorial to create a Starry background for your planet. Very simple and you should have something like this one.

Step 9: Now go back to the planet’s layer. Select Blending Option/ Outer Glow and put in the following figure.

Note that for the color of the planet that I’ve selected, I choose the correspondent color for the outer glow (#ffa200).

Here’s the final outcome. Hope you like it.