Glass ball

Ok I know the glass ball has been done a thousand times but I think this looks kinda cool.

1) Open PS and add a linear gradient of your choice to the background (I am using blue to white on mine)



2) Create a new layer and draw a circle with the circle marquee tool (top left on your toolbox) and fill that circle with the same gradient like so.



3) Go to filter-->render-->lens flare and add a lens flare to the circle (I used 50-300mm zoom default brightness)



4) Ctrl click on your circle layer to select it and then go to filter-->distort-->spherize. Press ctrl-F to repeat this filter 2 more times.



5) Now right click on the circle layer and select blending options and change them as below









it should now look like this



6) Now crtl click the circle layer to select it and then go to select-->modify-->contract and enter a value of 10. Now create a new layer and fill the selection with white



7) Keep the selection (if you have removed it ctrl click on our new white circle layer to re-select it) and while holding down the shift key press the down arrow 3 times to move the selection marquee down. Now go to select-->feather and enter a value of 20. Now hit delete. This removes the middle and most of the bottom half of our white circle which we will use as our shine.



8) Final step is to go to edit-->transform-->scale and make the shine circle smaller so that it fills about half of our ball. Once you are happy change its blend mode to soft light.

That’s it your done here is what I ended up with. Any trouble don’t hesitate to contact me.

nice tut man, like it a lot

Good explanation, I will be trying this one over the next couple of days. Thank you.