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!
KCLiVES
Nice!
Jack
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?
Robin
Nice one, thanks!!
Brad
Wowwwwww Orbs hmmmmmm tasty
Jack
Is anyone actually going to make any orbs with my tutorial? I wanna see some results
