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Creating a starfield is easy!

 

Press the D key and fill the layer with black (Option-Delete [PC: Alt-Backspace]) and then apply the Add Noise Filter (Filter> Noise>Add Noise). You’ll need to enter a large Amount (we used 230%) in the dialog to produce a lot of noise. To introduce some gray values to the noise, apply the Blur More filter (Filter>Blur>Blur More).

Now comes the trick to make the noise behave so you have a star field: Choose Image>Adjustments>Levels. In the Levels dialog, drag the dark value (black) slider almost entirely to the right and move the highlight slider (white) slightly to the left, with the mid-tone slider gray) between the two. Click OK and your star field appears.

from Bert Monroy

2 Comments

  1. Someguy said on — May 1, 2009 @ 12:43 pm

    Sounds great! Too bad there’s no example shown…

  2. Brice said on — December 7, 2010 @ 4:43 pm

    For some reason when I click ok after selecting the levels adjustment, the changes are not added to the image. Why is this?

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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