With the selection made, create a new layer mask in the image by clicking on the “Add Layer Mask” button.

Here’s the result:

And here’s how your layers panel should be right now:

Step 5: Adding the second planet

To add our second planet into the project, follow the same process we did before. Go to File -> Place and select the “cosmos1_0001.jpeg” image.

Drag the image up a little bit so we can make a selection around this new planet.

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool again (Shortcut M) and repeat the same steps we did with the other planet to select this one.

With the selection made, create a new layer mask in this layer by clicking on the “Add Layer Mask” button.

Here’s the result:

Now we’re going to have to resize, move and rotate the planet. To do that, use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl/Cmd+T) and check the images below:

· Remember to always hold Shift while scaling to maintain the proportions

After resizing it, drag the planet to this position:

The final step is to rotate the planet. With the Free Transform Tool still activated, rotate the planet (click and drag outside the rectangle) based on the instructions in the image below:

· You don’t have to hold Shift while rotating this time

Here’s the final result in our image and in our layers panel:

Step 6: Improving our layers

Before we continue let’s arrange our layer in a better way. To start off, change the names of all ours layers to something that represent them (so we don’t get lost in the future). To change the name of a layer simply double click on its name. Here’s how I renamed my layers:

After you’ve renamed all of your layers, select all of them (click on the first one, hold Shift and click on the last one) and drag them to the “Create new Group” button.

Name this new group Images (or anything else you want) and we’re good to go.

Step 7: Adding the forest

We’re done with the photo manipulation part of our project, we are now only going to work with brushes. Let’s start off by adding the forest to the right part of our image. If you’re not familiar with installing and using Photoshop brushes, I suggest you take a look at this video on how to install Photoshop brushes. So now that you know how to install new brushes into Photoshop, you can go ahead and download and install the four brush packs that we are going to need for the next steps. It’s two tree packs, one bushes pack, and one people pack. After all done, create a new layer in our project by clicking in the “Add new layer” button (or use the shortcut Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Alt/Opt+N). Rename this new layer Forest.