Orbs Tutorial

This is my very easy step-by-step guide to making orbs (a.k.a. bubbles, aqua buttons, spheres):

1. Open a new canvas. These are the dimensions that suit my images, but yours ca be any size:

2. Your canvas will look like this:

3. Press Shift+F5 to fill the canvas, then select Color...

and type, in the # box, type 313131 (the background colour for the forum) like so:

4. Your canvas will look like this:

5. Create a new layer, entitled "orb background":

6. Then on the orb background layer, make a small elliptical marquee (hint: hold shift to make it perfectly circular) about this big:

7. Press Shift+F5 to fill the selection, and, as before, type 29b621 into the # box. This is the green colour used by the forum, but yours can be any colour. Your canvas will look like this:

8. With the selection still selected, create a new layer entitled "orb highlight":

9. Make your foreground colour white, then click the Gradient button, and choose Foreground to Transparency:

10. I zoomed in to make it easier. Now, while holding shift (to make the line straight), drag a gradient from the top of the selection, to just above the bottom:

11. Now deselect the layer by pressing Ctrl+D. Then press Ctrl+T to enter free-translation mode. Change the W (width) box to 80%, and the H (height) to 70%:

12. Press Enter to accept and exit the free-translation, so your image looks like this:

13. Press Ctrl+V to select the Move Tool, then press the up button once, to move your highlight layer up 1 pixel, so it looks like this:

14. That's about it, your result, when zoomed back out, should look like this:

**extra**

If you want more orbs then do the following:

15. Press Shift and select the "orb higlight" and "orb background" layers, right click on them, and select Merge Layers.

16. Now duplicate the layer, by pressing Ctrl+J.

17. Move the new layer to wherever you want it.

18. Repeat the above 2 steps for each new orb you want!

Enjoy the result!

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This is my sig!

Yeah, it rocks...

Nice!

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I am a self confessed Graphics Genius

Took focking ages doing all those screenshots.

I wonder if anyone will actually use it to make orbs... maybe they can make their own rank images to see what others think?

_________________
This is my sig!

Yeah, it rocks...