Hello everyone this is Chris from Spoon Graphics
back with another video tutorial for Adobe Photoshop.
Today I'm going to show you a few simple steps to create a surreal glass sphere floating
within a photograph.
This cool effect is perfect for creating interesting album covers, or just to transform your landscape
photos into abstract art pieces.
All it takes is a few relatively simple Photoshop tools, a couple of filters, and a touch of
shading, making it a pretty easy effect you can create in minutes.
But first, if you want access to a library of design resources to use within your projects,
check out Envato Elements...
To begin you first need a photograph to place the abstract sphere within. Landscape images
work best, but any kind of environment would work. I'm using this free image of a Road
Between Mountains from Pexels.
Go to the View menu and make sure you have Rulers enabled, as well as the Snap setting.
Drag horizontal and vertical guides and place them in the centre of the canvas.
Add a new layer, then select the Elliptical Marquee tool.
Hold the ALT key and drag out a circular selection from the centre of the image. Scale it to
the desired size of your sphere.
Use the ALT+Backspace shortcut to fill this selection with black, which should be the
default foreground colour.
Go to Select > Deselect, or use the shortcut CMD (or CTRL on Windows) + D.
Select and drag the Background layer onto the new layer icon at the bottom of the Layers
panel to make a copy. Drag this copy to the top of the layer stack, above the black circle
layer.
Go to Filter > Distort > Spherize and max out the Amount to 100%. You can run this filter
again for an even more... spherical appearance, but any more and the quality starts to degrade.
Use the CMD+T shortcut for Transform, then scale this layer down to the same size as
the black circle layer. You will need to scale non-proportionally to make it fit exactly.
Since the function of the ALT key was swapped around in a recent Photoshop update you may
or may not have to hold it depending on your preferences settings.
The snap option makes it easy to line everything up. Hit the Enter key when you're done.
Hold the CMD key, then click on the layer thumbnail of the black circle layer to load
its selection.
Activate the Background copy layer, then add a Layer Mask, which will trim away the square
corners.
Turn off the visibility of the black circle layer to eliminate the thin black halo around
the circle.
Click the layer thumbnail of the Background copy layer to activate the artwork, not the
layer mask.
We need to add a Twirl effect, but first make sure you load the selection of the black circle
again, otherwise the artwork will become distorted. Although this could be desirable if you want
to go for more of amorphous shape.
With the selection active, the Filter > Distort > Twirl effect keeps the sphere perfectly
circular. Add around 50% twirliness to distort the image slightly.
Use the CMD+; shortcut to turn off the visibility of the guides to better see the effect.
Add a new layer, then select the brush tool. Set up a soft tip with zero hardness.
CMD+Click the black circle to load the selection again, then paint with black on one side of
your sphere shape to add some shading.
Use the X key to swap the foreground and background colours around to paint with white, then add
some highlights around the edge on the opposite side.
Change the blending mode of this layer to Soft Light, then reduce the opacity to around
40%.
Double click the main sphere layer and add an Inner Glow layer style. Change the settings
to White, with the Overlay blending mode.
Reduce the Choke to zero, then change the Size slider to find a suitable value that
smoothly fades into the sphere. Reduce the opacity to around 30%.
Activate the top layer in the Layers panel, then add a new layer above it.
Paint some basic highlight shapes within the sphere area, then change the blending mode
to Overlay. Reduce the opacity to around 50%.
Add another new layer, then use the X key to swap the foreground colour back to black.
Place a single spot of black on the canvas, then press CMD+T to Transform.
Squash and extend this shape to form a shadow that can be placed underneath the sphere to
make it seem like it's floating in mid-air.
Change the blending mode to Linear Burn, then reduce the Fill value to allow the colours
to interact with the background to create a slightly more realistic shadow effect.
The final result is a surreal glass sphere effect that turns any photograph into an abstract
art piece.
As a finishing touch, you could also flip the sphere vertically to mimic the kind of
refraction that is captured with real crystal ball photography.
So I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, if you did, or if you learnt any new tricks be sure
to give the video a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel to stick around for more of my
content, and head over to my Spoon Graphics website to download all my free design resources.
Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.