This week’s feature is entitled Virtual Mushiness. Valentine’s Day is fast approaching – are YOU ready for it? Following are a bunch of tutorials ranging from creating cute heart wallpapers (which could be easily adapted as a card for that special someone), to heart-hugging bears and enough candy to satisfy anyone’s sweet tooth. Head on after the break to meet the madness!

	Valentine’s Day Hearts – by AdobeTutorialz The next lesson I’ll show you a possibility of designing the abstract background for Valentine’s Day, made very stylish. After finishing this colourful tutorial, you’ll find yourself with a cool retro Valentine’s Day wallpaper! You can always adjust and change it to use it as a virtual card as well.
	Valentine’s Day Bear – by Pimp my Com Alright, everyone knows how annoying those flash ads with talking emoticons are. But frankly, if you can get past the annoyance, they don’t look too bad do they? This tutorial will walk you through creating a shiny teddy bear commonly seen in those adverts, perfect perhaps to send to your worse enemy, complete with an obnoxious rollover audio.
	Valentine’s Day Ideas – by AdobeTutorialz This modern art piece is pretty slick. With wings sprouting out of its back, and a tattoo-like floral design surrounding it, this heart could completely feel at home in a biker gang. Use the little guy as a wallpaper, or send it to someone you love!
	Valentine Heart – by Photoshop Archive Using brushes and shapes, you’ll be able to whip up this virtual box of chocolate in no time. True, it looks like clip-art, and someone will think you’ve just taken it off a clip-art site, but you’ll rest easy with the knowledge that this box of chocolates is adorned with the sweat of your brow!
	Candy Hearts – by Photoshop Guides Hey, always wanted to make your own virtual candies? Well now you can have your cake and write on it too. This tut will walk you through creating a fully customizable candy heart in Photoshop. Make a bunch, personalize them, and send them out to your friends as small tokens this Valentines!
	Valentine’s Day Romantic Background – by Adobe Tutorialz Yet another Valentine’s Day wallpaper from AdobeTutorialz! This one uses repeating patterns and Web 2.0 hearts to adorn your background. Perhaps you can use it as a backdrop for a mushy message?
	Valentines Hearts – by TDW This is closest to a Valentine’s Day card I could find. A bright, pulsing purple heart rests romantically on an equally purple background. With this much beckoning, how can you resist giving this tut a try?
	Designing a Candy Gift Box – by Your Photoshop Guide Another box of candies! This one looks quite different from clip-art though. With shiny ribbon and a two-tier box design, my mouth is already watering thinking of the goodies that hide within.
	Love Wallpaper for the Desktop – by AdobeTutorialz Maybe, just maybe, this Valentine’s is going to be a hard one. Perhaps your heart has been torn asunder, the fleshy pieces scattered by wind across the land. Never fear brave Photoshopper, this is the tutorial for you!

This week’s feature is entitled Creating the Masses. Designing your very own planet is great fun, as the final results can seem breathtaking. There are many techniques on creating your own balls of gas or sediment – some using textures, others brushes. A few tutorials below are unique in that they using real images of cities – either satellite photos or street level. Some tutorials listed below will present a challenge, others are great for beginners. Even if you aren’t in the mood for creating a planet now, just browse the tutorials to see what stellar creations have been made in Photoshop!

	Making a Planet – V2 – by Tozzie This is the most realistic planet tutorial I have come across! The clever utilization of real cloud pictures also makes the final planet come alive. The final result will depend on what images you use during your initial composition. If you want to follow the tutorial exactly, I recommend grabbing the images with a screenshot. However I think it’s funner if you look for your own textures to play around with, so you can make your own unique planet!
	Basic Fiery Planet – by Photoshop Point This planet effect is achieved through some brushing. This technique produces a decent planet, and I recommend this one for beginners.
	Urban Planet Tutorial – by Alpha-Leader Want to create your own continents? Plunk cities onto that land? This tut is pretty neat in that it allows you to REALLY customize your planet, by determining land and sea boundaries. You can leave it pristine and forested, or overrun by cities – it’s up to you.
	Making a Photo-Realistic Planet – by Tutorial Site This tut is another one great for a beginner. It also uses brushes, but you need to create those brushes yourself! Nice walkthrough into adjusting brush settings and applying the to an image.
	Creating a Planet Using Photoshop – by Photoshop Nerds This planet is HOT! Make a sizzling mass through use of several filters. Also a nice one for Photoshop newbies, and it leaves you with something which could easily be burning a sun.
	Exploding Planet – by Tutorial Wiz Feeling destructive? Armageddon near? Create a cracked planet, then blow it up (literally!) using several filters. The final effect is pretty impressive, and best of all – pretty easy to do!
	How to Make a Planet – by dinyctis Another tutorial using textures, however this one uses only one! All the other effects are done through playing with layers styles and filters. In the end, you’re left with a beautiful sphere shrouded partially in shadows.
	How to Create Your Own Planets Using Your Panoramas – by PhotoJojo This one is really neat! Grab a picture taken at street level, or a panoramic metropolis – then stretch it around a sphere to create an exaggerated, cartoony planet. Depending on your source image, this can turn out really nifty!
	How to Create Your Own Planet – by EyesonTutorials This one is a little advanced as you need to manipulate a lot of photos, but the final result is definitely worth it. Grabbing images from Google Maps allows you to make a planet based on cities back home. The final sphere looks like something from the future (and personally, I thought some of his examples at the end reminded me of a Death Star!). If you’ve got some time to kill, check it out!

This week’s feature is entitled Electric Paint. Glowing beams, fairy lighting effects, and magical particles are quickly becoming popular for the dynamic energy they add to an image. Head on after the break for a list of tutorials that will get you making plasma, creating swooping swirls, and illuminating the dark!

	Advanced Glow – by PSDTuts In this tutorial we’re going to create some really sharp looking glow effects using a combination of layer styles, the pen tool and colour blending. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you’ll pick up some tips you didn’t know before.
	Plasma – by Lorelei Web The requests for Fantasy Art tutorials are enormous, I still get emails and Pms from people asking to do more Fantasy Art tuts, so here is one more, called “Plasma” (Star, not the TV!) which I hope you’d enjoy.
	Electrifying Energy Beams – by Luxa Here’s a great effect that will bring some energy to your subject. We’ll be wrapping this singer’s arm with a glowing beam of light, adding sparkles, and adjusting the colors to make it all seem magical.
	Neon Lights with Photoshop – by Darjan Panic There are different ways of making neon lites with Photoshop. It’s really easy and fun to make them. So today’s post is a nice tutorial on how to make neon lights and how to use them in different ways to make nice effects.
	Magic Lights – by Abduzeedo This one is neat in that it uses modified text to create the effect as opposed to the pen tool. While the final effect looks pretty neat, this isn’t a tutorial for a beginner photoshopper as some steps are not fully explained. I encourage you to look at his updated tutorial which explains things a little better.
	Magic – by Photoshop 7.0 Tutorials If you have an older version of Photoshop, don’t despair! Here is a tutorial which outlines a method to make a glowing chalky-type swirl in Photoshop 7.0
	Light Beam – by PhotonCube This tutorial is not very hard at all and you should be able to make something like my beam if you follow the steps I took. Please remember that as you get better with photoshop its more and more up to you to decide what looks better or worse. The steps are not set in concrete! You may get a better beam by doing something I didn’t.
	Creating Light Motion Trails & Glowing Sparks – by Veerle A technique often used in advertising these days, is these glowing lines. They look like light motion trails. If you ever wondered how to create these kind of lines, here is how I do it… This is probably my favourite of the lot
	BONUS! : Abstract Shine Animation with Photoshop and ImageReady – by Elie El Take your fantastical swirls to another level! This simple tutorial will teach you how to add in a wicked animated shine to your wisps of light. Try it out for a very cool final effect!