Note: This tutorial is valid for Photoshop 5.0 and some steps may be different in newer versions.
~In response to a question posed by axleclurk about how the image was done~
Final Image:
Response:
Sure thing, axle. Although, I can't really take all the credit. I used several techniques I learned from gurus and especially Steve and DarkGarden's tuts.
The first thing I needed was a clean mask of the thumb to go in the foreground. For this, I used the pen tool and really got a chance to play with it for the first time. It's a great tool. I made a selection from the path, and copy-pasted the thumb into a layer above everything.
Then I made a circular selection on the hand where I wanted the ball to go, cut and paste. Now, I could have made a displacement map and distorted it properly, but since all I needed was a spherical distortion and it didn't have to be perfect (cuz this IS for fun, ), I used spherize set at 100%.
On the circular layer, make a selection, contract about 8 pixels, do a magic wand on the area surrounding the circle, and then invert the selection to get a selection of the outer part of the circle. Then run twirl on the selection to give the edge more definition.
To that I added highlights and shadows. ctrl-click the circular layer to load the selection. Then move the selection (not the image) down and to the left a bit. alt-click the circular layer to leave you with a crescent shape.
Create a new layer, and fill the crescent with black. Run gaussian blur, settings to taste. Copy the layer and set it to color burn.
Now, do the same thing to the opposite side of the ball except fill the selection with white and set the duplicated layer to color dodge.
Voila, you have a decent glass ball.
Also, I don't know if anyone noticed, but I tried to simulate the shadow of the ball. I created a custom gradient to fade to transparency and used the radial gradient tool on the circular selection. Then I transformed it till it looked about right and set the opacity appropriately.
