This is a a quick and easy way to make a simple star field in PS.

First, open a new document of any size.

Make two layers and fill them both with black. Your layers palette should look like this:


I named the top layer stars, and the bottom layer background for reference.

Now, on the stars layer, go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Use the following settings:

*I may have gotten a little carried away with the arrows... lol

Click ok.

Change the stars layer's blending mode to dissolve. And change the opacity to a very low number. I put it at one, but you can mess with it to see what you like. Your layers palette should look similar to this:


My final result was this:


Full res final can be found here: http://www.breakdown-media.com/images/tutorials/stars/stars.jpg

PSD can be found here: http://www.breakdown-media.com/images/tutorials/stars/stars.zip

-TutorMe

Pretty nice... it looks real too!

good & simple way. I learned to create rain with the same method, just adding a motion blur to it afterwards.

Also nice to give the stars a more coloured overall-effect, is to go to the layer-style and then gradient overlay, pick a flashy colour from the list and blend it to 15% or something like that.
Saves a lot of work I guess, if you want your stars to look a little bit more random.
Or that's how I usually do it, I'm sure there are better ways.

Another thing to add to the randomness, is to go to Filter>Distort>Ripple. Use whatever settings you want. It makes it look a little more realistic.

Sample of that:

Ah cool. Cheers!

...and for even more realism add at least one known constalation.

thats pretty cool thanks and by the way i love the arrows they help

Maybe make a tut: how to make arrows like this??
They do well, haha

Thanks TutorMe and KB, I have always avoided using dissolve as a layer mode because the results looked too cheezy, but know it can be put to good use. Rain and stars. Thanks for posting this ..

u should change ur name to Tutoryou! great one buddy!

i think i screwed up the tutorial,

I used Jing. It's free screen capture software.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jingproject.com%2F&ei=w7XhR7jJL53uzASjwom1CA&usg=AFQjCNEJp4LMjIscMVRMO2Kv1oko6r7FuA&sig2=GCNWMj-YyPzPWmrHxoKhlA

Great tip! Was using the brush tool up until now, took forever...

It's also important to add 1 Real Star...

a good thing about doing it that way though (using scattering and stuff) is that you can also add random variation to the colour