How to Create an Exploding Planet in Adobe Photoshop

In this tutorial you’ll how to create a cracked and exploding planet. All super villains wish for a weapon capable of destroying a planet. We have one too: we call it Photoshop! We will start with perfectly good planet and smash it like a egg! Or at least an egg that is floating in space and has an explosion of energy within it.

Tutorial Assets

I’ve contributed the photos and textures that were used to create this effect. These are freely available for you to use for your own personal projects. Look for the Download Attachments link in the sidebar, then save the ExplodingPlanetAssets.zip file and extract the files within it to follow along with our galactic adventure in super villainy as we crack up a planet!

The zip file contains five reference photos of a cracked concrete sphere, a MainImage.jpg file to serve as the setting for the space scene, and a PlanetRender.psd file to use as the starting point of our planetary destruction.