Posted on June 17th, 2007
Written by admin and filed into the Design, Miscellaneous category.

In this tutorial I will teach you how to create a trendy orb like this:

Orbs like this can be used for logos, websites, signatures, avatars and more. They are a very helpful thing to know how to make. My tutorial assumes you have a basic to intermediate knowledge of photoshop.

To start off making your orb you need to grab your elliptical marquee tool. On a new layer, while holding shift (to keep your cicle perfectly symetrical) create your circle. Make the circle as big as you want This will make the edges of the circle. Rename this circle layer orb holder.

While you have the Orb Holder layer selected to go to the blending options and insert these settings.

If you have applied the settings correctly your Orb Holder layer should look like this.

 

Now we are going to move on to the actual orb. Make a new layer and name it Orb Base Layer. Then Ctrl- click the Orb Holder layer, a selection should pop up. Go to Select > Modify > Contract. Contract anywhere from 5 pixels to 13 pixels. The larger your orb the more you want to contract. I used 7 because I am making a relatively small orb.

 

Assuming you are still on the Orb Base layer I would like you to fill your selection with any color. Then open the blending options and enter these settings.

If you inserted all of those settings correctly you should have something like this:

 

Now that we have the base of the orb done. Its time to make it look more like glass. To do that you want to make a new layer. Name the layer Orb Reflection. Then Ctrl - click the Orb Base layer. Now grab your gradient tool. Plug in these settings:

 

Now assuming that you are still on the layer Orb Reflection and you still have the selection selected, drag from the top - left of the orb to the middle with your gradient tool.

If you did it right it should turn out like the one above.

Now add your own flare to it. I added screws to the side of mine, but experiment and come up with different ways to make this yours.

 

Congratulations! you completed this tutorial on how to make an orb. This orb can be useful for many things and I hope you go on and use your new knowledge to create good graphics.