Shiny Glass Ball Tutorial
Before we begin, I would like to thank you very much for trying this tutorial. Your continued support will allow me to create more incredible and useful
tutorials for you to benefit from. When you complete this tutorial, I would appreciate any feedback you wish to give me. PLEASE post on the forums if you have a chance. Once again, thank you.
I assume that you have a basic understanding of Photoshop such as how to create and delete layers
and channels etc. However, if you do get stuck on a step, or have questions about ANYTHING, please contact me at:
. I will be more than happy to answer your questions about how to do a technique or step. Also, the units used in this tutorial are pixels.
Thanks again, and have fun!
Please open your copy of ShinyGlassBall.psd in Photoshop so you can have it handy and be able to use it as a reference when you need to. Download the .psd in zip format, and unzip it to get to the psd file. This helps
you to see where a certain element of the interface needs to be on the document. A tip I recommend
is to set your screen resolution to 1152 x 864 or higher. Of course
this is not mandatory, but I have found that when working in Photoshop you need all the desktop space you can have.
- Open Photoshop and create a new document, (ctrl + n) that is 250(w) x 250(h) in size, and a white background.
- Create a new layer and name it “color gradient”.
- Click on the background in the layers palette to make it your current working layer.
- Hit ctrl + r to bring up the rulers. Make sure View -> Snap to -> Document Bounds is checked, and drag a horizontal guide, down, toward the middle of the document.
It should snap right into the middle when you get close enough.
- Do the same thing for the vertical guide.
You should now have an intersection point that is exactly in the middle of the document.
- Hit ctrl + r to hide the rulers.
- With the elliptical marquee tool (M), place your cursor near the intersection point of the guides, and hold alt + shift. Start dragging a circle and make it 152 x 152 pixels.
- Hide your guides (View -> Show-> Guides)
- Click on the "color gradient" layer to make it your current working layer again.
- Keep that selection active and hit “d” on your keyboard to restore the default foreground/background colors (black and white).
- Now, with the gradient tool (G), drag a gradient that is dark at the top left, and lighter at the bottom right of the circular selection:
You should have a gradient circle that looks like this:
- With the selection still active create a new layer called "inner shadow" and give it a black stroke of 2 pixels inside (Edit -> Stroke), then apply a gaussian blur of 3 pixels (Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur).
- Deselect your selection (ctrl + d).
Now we're going to add the inside highlights and reflections.
- Create a new layer set called "Highlights".
- Within this new layer set, create a layer called "bot soft hlight".
- Create another new layer; don't worry about naming it.
- On the unamed layer, create a black oval that is 190w x 160h, and position it like the picture:
- Click on the "bot soft hlight" layer to make it your current working layer.
- Load the color gradient layer's selection by ctrl + clicking on its thumbnail in the layers palette.
- Contract this circular selection by 2 pixel (Select -> Modify -> Contract).
- Now, ctrl + alt + click on the black oval layer's thumbnail in the layers palette. This just subtracts the oval's selection from the circle's selection to get a little sliver like this:
- Delete the black oval layer by dragging it to the trash icon at the bottom of the layers palette.
- Feather this new selection by 3 pixels (Select -> Feather), and then fill it with white. Deselect (ctrl + d) and lower this layer's opacity 40%.
- Bring back your guides.
- Create a new layer called "inner large light".
- With the Elliptical Marquee Tool, put your cursor in the middle of the circle where the guides cross, hold down the left mouse button while pressing alt + shift and create a circle that is 128 x 128.
- Fill the selection with white, deselect, and drop the opacity of that layer to 10%.
- Now select the Move Tool (V), and hit the up arrow on your keyboard two times to move this circle up 2 pixels.
You can now hide the guides by unchecking View -> Show -> Guides.
- Create a new layer and name it "bot two".
- Load the "circle gradient" layer's selection (ctrl + click on its thumbnail in the layers palette) and contract it by 4 pixels.
- Give yourself plenty of space to work with by making your document window fairly large. Drag one of the corners to create some gray space around the actual image (take a look at the next screen shot to see what I mean).
- With the Elliptical Marquee tool, start in the general area I have shown below, hold alt + click and drag an oval similar to this to subtract it and create our shape for the highlights:
- Now that you have this new selection, zoom in to about 300%, grab the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L), and subtract a rectangular selection in the middle of it by holding alt and making a shape like this:
- Smooth the selection (Select -> Modify -> Smooth) by 3 pixels.
- Create a new layer and name it “color gradient”.
- Grab the Gradient Tool (G), and with white as your foreground color, select the "Foreground to Transparent" gradient preset:
- Start at the bottom right, and drag to the top left of the selection to apply the gradient as shown below:
You can now deslect this selection.
- Create a new layer called "bot oval" and make a white oval that is 15w x 8h. Position it near the bottom right of the circle.
- Deselect any selection you may have going, and hit ctrl + t ("Free Transform" function) to bring up a bounding box that will allow you to rotate the oval.
- Rotate it counter-clockwise by about -12° and hit enter to apply the transformation.
- Lower the bot oval layer to 40% opacity.
- Create a new layer called "top left hard reflection".
I made this reflection shape with the pen tool. You can see my path nodes in the shot below and try to recreate it. In fact, I encourage you to do that. But, if you're not too proficient with the pen tool yet, feel free to go to the Paths palette, drag a copy of it to your version.
- After you've made your shape that looks like mine, or used my path, load the "color gradient" layer's selection.
- Contract the selection by 2 pixels.
- Then, hold shift + ctrl + alt and click on the path you made, or if you used mine, click on that. This will select the area where the two selections intersect, and you should have a selection like this:
- Next, make your current working layer be "top left hard reflection", and apply a white "foreground to transparent" gradient to the selection:
- Deselect and drop the opacity to 60%. You should have something like this:
- Make a new layer and call it "top oval hard".
- Create a white oval that is 35w x 15h, and drop the opacity of this layer to 50%.
- Place it at the top left area of the circle.
- Make sure the top oval hard layer is your current working layer, and hit ctrl + t to bring up the free transform tool.
- Rotate the oval counter clock-wise by about -8°.
Here is what mine looks like:
- Duplicate the "top oval hard" layer (drag it to the new layer icon at the bottom the layers palette) and rename it to "top oval soft". Place it directly below the top oval hard layer in the layers palette and raise the opacity to 60%.
- Deselect if you happen to have any selections active, and give the top oval soft layer a gaussian blur of 3.
- Create a new layer that is directly above the top oval hard layer in the layers pallete and name it "top half hlight".
- Load the color gradient layer's selection, and subtract by 3 pixels.
- Then, make sure you have enough gray area in the document window, and alt + drag an elliptical selection to subtract from the circular selection. This will give us our top highlight shape. Please see below for more info:
- Now that you have this selection, apply a white foreground to transparent like below:
- Deselect, drop the opacity of this layer to 70%, and move it down three pixels by tapping the arrows on your keyboard three times when the Move Tool (V) is your active tool.
You should have something similar to this:
