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Greetings and salutations everyone! Hopefully
your week has been progressing in your favor. Mine has been a
bit on the chaotic side, as I've just done the leap to DSL from
the archaic 56k connection. Talk about a difference! It's like
comparing a go cart to a V-8.
But alas, along with the switch comes a million
other details (and a huge system burp) so I'm tardy with this
column. I think I have the glitches worked out now finally. By
the way, for those of you who are keeping score: my 4 year old
out-fished me again last week. I took him out to catch a few
little perch to placate his fishing addiction, and he pulls in a
Northern Pike. Do you think his dad could catch one? As a matter
of fact I've NEVER caught a Pike, though I've tried more times
than I care to remember. I think it's time to take up bowling
again and leave the fishing to my little buddy.
Before I start, let me first give credit for
where this idea came from. If you have never been to the Pank
Pages website and seen their tutorials, I strongly urge you to
do so. The idea for this week's tutorial comes from something I
saw there, though we will be doing something completely (almost)
different. You can get to the Pank Pages website here:
http://www.pankpages.com/
Let's start with a new image, black, 72 dpi.
Mine is set to 6 inches wide and 5 inches high, RGB. Create a
new layer and, with the circular marquee, make a nice, fat,
round selection in the middle of your image. Fill this selection
with gray.
In the past when we've made spheres, I've use
the quick-and-easy gradient tool. Not so this time. This is the
portion I've borrowed from Pank, and I love the effect. This
isn't exactly how they did it, but a variation.
Create a new layer. Select the airbrush tool,
and make sure your default brushes are loaded. With white as
your foreground color, select the round feathered brush, size
100. In either the upper right quadrant of the globe or upper
left, your choice, spray some white in the new layer.
Do this twice more, only reducing the brush size
each time: 65 first and 21 last, moving toward the upper right
of the original spray each time.
Create a new layer. With your circular selection
still active, let's change the foreground color to black. In the
quadrant opposite your highlights, paint gently around the edge.
Don't overdo it... just take your time. I'm using a brush size
of 65 for this one.
We don't want that bottom edge to be totally
dark, so apply a Gaussian blur of 5 or so. This will also help
clear up any jerky distortions from applying the paint to
vigorously (something I'm always guilty of).
Select the layer directly beneath your
reflections layer. Create a new layer here. Now open an image
you would like inside your globe... I'm using a wolf for this
example. Hey, I'm in Montana, right?
Anyway, make a selection that is larger than you
globe on the photo. Copy that, go back to the globe image, and
paste. Using the Edit>Transform>Scale, resize the photo so the
edges just toucj the edges of the globe. If you need a gauge as
to how large the globe is, you can move the dark shadow layer
above the photo.
Once your image is in place, change the layer
mode to overlay.
Now select the original gray circle. Go to
Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation, and check the colorize box. Adjust
your sliders until you find a color/brightness you like. This is
so cool:
If you like, apply the Filter>Distort>Spherize
filter to the photo layer. This will just round it out a bit to
add to the illusion.
You may now dress it up a bit with the lens
flare, perhaps some more edging with the airbrush, etc.
Here's my image after some dressing up:
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