Create good looking planet sprites with photoshop!

This easy tutorial only requires that you have Adobe Photoshop...

1st: go to Flaming Pear

2nd: Search and download the Lunarcell plugin

3rd: Install the plugin by putting the right files in the right folder (That part is in the plugin's readme file)

4th: Purchase a license for the plugin, or search google for a keygen (That's what I did)

5th: Create a new file. If you want the planet for use with something like Flash Trek, then the new file has to be transparent. You select Filter/Flaming Pear/ Lunarcell...

6th: In the left inferior corner, there is a sliding box. Select "Composite". That'll keep your background transparent for better use with flash...

7th: Choose the settings for your planet. A preview will appear in the top right corner, if you haven't noticed yet. Make a planet that you like, et voilà... It's done.

If you're making a space scene with various planets, you can define the planet's size in one of the regulators in the top left corner that says "Size" (Wow!).
If you're a 3d modeler and want to make a planet's texture, then first of all, i would advise you to choose a non-square image canvas. Then choose "Map Color" in step 6, instead of Composite... Et voilà again.

hm, interesting, but i prefer to stick to a simple, yet goodie:

using photoshop or really any other graphics app

1: Create a new file ( i generally use a 500px X 500px)

2: Select the Elipse Mask tool. In the properties bar, set to either fixed size or fixed ratio. (i prefer the latter, i set it to 1, 1)

3. click and drag in your screen, try to get the mask to be as centered as possible (that's important)

4. There are several ways to do this step, but i'll choose the simplest, or most common.
Choose your paintbucket tool. In the presets, change it to pattern. Now choose a pattern that best suits your planet, and fill the mask with it.

5. (optional) go to image>adjustments and using one or many of the colour changing options, create the colours for your planet.

6. Go to Filters>Distort>Spherize. Set it to quality and 100. Click OK

7. Create a new layer above the planet

reselect your elipse mask tool, and change it back to a non-fixed ratio mask. Also change it to Subtract. Then click and drag over your planet, until you have only a cresent left of the mask.

8. On the new layer that you had created, fil the mask with black. Remove the mask (CTRL+D)

9. Go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Choose the settings that best fit for the dark side of the planet

Now you're done! There are many ways to expand upon this, such as adding glows, playing with textures and alpha-channels and such.