Planet Earth: Matte

This planet and its atmosphere were done by using some techniques in Photoshop. To begin with my clouds and star field a layer with a white background with 75% opacity was used. Then I used a soft brush with a preset of 1000% scatter and both axes checked. A filter was used to make clouds. Render and different clouds was used. I then set a layer style over it, gradient overlay, picked my purple and green colors, then set scaled to 50% with an angle of 135. To make the star layer a new layer filled with black was used. Another filter tool was applied this time noise. I added noise the amount around 10% with Gaussian and monochromatic clicked. I adjusted this layer using levels tools to bring amount a right of stars. Then I duplicated this layer again and adjusted this layer with levels.  To create extra stars for my purposes I used a custom brush with a layer style added to it. This created my background. The layers involving the earth involved blending layers like overlay. I added some extra color to my background too by adding a layer over with then erasing it.