Photoshop Tutorials -- Creating Textured Spheres |
Creating Textured Spheres with Photoshop
This tutorial will show you how to create textured spheres. I used PhotoShop 4.01 for Windows. Some things may be done differently with other versions.
Start off by opening one of the textures from lesson 9, lesson 10 or, alternatively, creating a new texture or using one you have handy.
Select the Marquee tool and use the Marquee Options tab in the Options palette to set the Shape to Elliptical and the Style to Constrained Aspect Ratio. This will enable you to select a circular shape.
Select a circular shape from the texture. Choose Edit, Copy.
Choose File, New and click OK. Choose Edit, Paste. You should now have a circular piece of your texture in a separate file. You'll notice, though, that there is no room between the texture and the edges of the file. To fix this, choose Image, Canvas size and enter a number that's about 20 pixels or so bigger than the number currently displayed in the Width and Height. You may have to fill in the new area if the color differs from the background of the image. In any event you should end up with something similar to figure 11.1.
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| figure 11.1 |
Select the circular shape by making its layer active and CTRL-clicking on the layer in the layers palette.
Choose Filter, Distort, Spherize and set the Amount to 100% and the Mode to Normal.
You'll now have something that seems more spherical (see figure 11.2).
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| figure 11.2 |
With the selection still active create a new layer above the texture layer by clicking on the little folded-corner icon at the bottom of the layers palette.
Set the default foreground/background colors by clicking the small black and white squares icon below the current foreground/background colors icon in the tool bar.
Switch the foreground/background colors by clicking on the small, curved, two-headed arrow to the upper-right of the current foreground/background colors icon. The foreground color should now be white and the background color should be black.
Select the Gradient tool and, in the option palette, choose Foreground to Background as the Gradient and Radial as the Type.
Place the mouse in the upper-left of the sphere, click-and-drag the mouse towards the lower-right of the sphere. You'll now have a filled sphere (see figure 11.3) over the textured sphere.
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| figure 11.3 |
Here comes the trick. In the layers palette you'll notice a small pull-down menu. It should, more than likely, say "Normal". Click the small arrow to bring out the pull-down menu (see figure 11.4).
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| figure 11.4 |
These are the blending modes for the layers. Choose Hard Light to allow the textured layer to show through the radial gradient fill (see figure 11.5).
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| figure 11.5 |
That's all there is to it!
If you like, you can make the textured layer active again and colorize it with Image, Adjust, Hue/Saturation. Set the Colorize option and play around with the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. I changed the colors a little to get the goldish colored sphere in figure 11.6.
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| figure 11.6 |
As a variation you can get a button, or smartie, shape by applying the Sphereize filter to the radial gradient layer, as well. I applied that filter to the gradient layer with the wooden texture from lesson 10 to get figure 11.7.
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| figure 11.7 |
Play around with the blend options and have some fun.
Next time I'll be showing you how to use Photoshop's Quick Mask to create some really cool effects with photographs.
That's it.... Be sure to check out some of our other Photoshop tutorials or take a look at our new Photoshop Quick Tip Videos.
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