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How to create stars in Adobe Photoshop.

Make everything from simple star shapes to realistic constellations.

An image of a starry night sky created using Photoshop.

Get celestial with a whole sky’s worth of star-making options.

Stars are everywhere, from national flags to flyers to maps of the night skies to astrophotography images. You can make whatever type of stars you want to see. They can be classic five- or six-pointed stars, stars that shine like tiny pixels in the night, or photorealistic night skies blazing with light. When you want to make stars in Photoshop, you have lots of ways to call forth a starry night.

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An example of star shapes created using the Polygon tool in Photoshop.

Make a star shape with the Polygon tool.

You can use the Polygon tool to create custom shapes, including a unique star with exactly the number of points you want. You can choose to make it symmetrical and specify width, height, and other variables.

Draw stars with the Curvature Pen tool.

You can create nearly any shape with the Curvature Pen tool. Make a star and quickly fill it with colors, adjust edges, and sharpen or straighten lines and corners.

An example of star shapes created using the Curvature Pen tool in Photoshop.

An example of star shapes created using the brush tools in Photoshop.

Add stars with brush tools.

If you need to create stars in their multitudes, a star brush tool can be the way to go. With brushes, you can fill any scene with a shape, and alter how that shape is spaced and arrayed.

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Put any scene under the Milky Way with Sky Replacement.

With AI-powered photo editing software, you can quickly turn day into night or a cloudy sky into one replete with comets, meteors, and star trails. Adobe Stock has numerous images of starry nights, meteor showers, the Milky Way, or the aurora borealis glowing dramatically over the snowy Earth. Pick one and use Sky Replacement to add it to your image.

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An image of a desert landscape at dusk. The sky is partly cloudy.

An image of a desert landscape at night. The sky is full of stars.

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Imitate a night sky in Photoshop.

If you want to make your own stars, you can emulate a night sky in a few simple steps with this tutorial for beginners.

Create a new fill layer.
First make sure black and white are your foreground and background colors. Then create a new layer by clicking Layer › New Fill Layer › Solid Color in the top menu. Choose white as your fill color.
Add noise to a new layer.
In the new layer, select Filter › Noise › Add Noise. Select Rasterize in the pop-up window so you can edit the new fill layer. Then make sure Monochromatic is selected at the bottom of the Add Noise dialog box and move the slider to the right.
Add Gaussian blur.
Select Filter › Blur › Gaussian blur and add a little more blur. Don’t move the slider too far to the right or you’ll smooth out the noise.
Create a threshold effect.
Go to Image › Adjustment › Threshold. This will make pixels either black or white.
Adjust it.
Adjust the slider until you have black pixels on a white field looking like an inverted starry night.
Invert the pixels.
Select Ctrl+I on Windows or Command+I on Mac to invert the pixels.
Add more Gaussian blur.
Redo Step 3 to add more blur to the stars.
Change the background color.
Add a new solid color fill layer beneath your star layer to change the background color. Then change the blend mode of your star layer to Screen to blend your stars with the new background.