Create a new document with a width of 400px and a height of 300px and a transparent background. On the main layer, using the Paint Bucket Tool (G), fill your work area with the color #646464. This will be our background color so rename the layer to Background. Next, create a new layer and make sure it's placed above your Background layer and call it Circle. Select the layer Circle and then using the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) create the selection of a circle in the dead center (Note: To create a perfect circle you must hold the SHIFT key while dragging your selection; holding the ALT key will help you create a circle with its origin at your cursor; place your cursor in the middle of your scene and use them both!). Next, using the Paint Bucket Tool (G) fill your circle selection with the color #6D0000 (Note: If you'd like to use a different color, make sure it's not too dark or too light so that you can easily create the shadows and highlights later on). Deselect everything (CTRL+D) and this is what your scene should look like:

We'll now move on to creating the basic "3D" look of the ball, and also the embedding effect. Right click the layer Circle and choose Blending Options. In the new window that appears, click on Gradient Overlay. This window will help us create the circle's basic shine. Leave all the settings to default but change Style to Radial. Next, click on the black to white gradient in order to change its values. In the new window, the Gradient Editor Window, click on the bottom left arrow under the gradient to change the inner color and change it to #FF812D; then click on the bottom right arrow, which will be the outer color, and change it to #6D0000. The diagram bellow will explain more detailed this step for those of you unfamiliar with this process.

In the diagram above, you can see the Gradient Editor Window mentioned in the previous instructions. Areas #1 and #2 show the arrows that hold the inner and outer colors of the gradient. When you click on one of the arrows, the color property of that arrow activates as pointed in #3. So long story short, to change the color of an arrow, click first on the arrow, then click on the color and the all so familiar colors window will appear.
After changing the colors of the gradient, press OK to close the Gradient Editor Window. You should now have an orange circle that looks more 3D because of the shine in the center. This is what your Blending Options > Gradient Overlay Window should look like:

To make it look even better, while you still have the Blending Options Window opened, and the Gradient Overlay option selected, on your actual scene, using your pointer, start dragging the shine from the center of the circle. To give it a more realistic look, drag the shine a little bit towards the top right portion of the circle. Your image should look similar to the following:


Next, in the Blending Options Window, select Outer Glow. Change the Blending Mode to Normal and select the gradient instead of the blunt color. Next click on the gradient to change the Outer Glow colors. The bottom left arrow, which is the inner glow, you always want it to be black or at least the darkest of the two values. The bottom right arrow, which is the outer color, you want it to be the color of the background, but a little bit lighter. For the outer color I used #A8A8A8 and inner color black #000000. Press OK once you changed the colors of the gradient and next I will briefly explain the other options in the Outer Glow menu and how they'll affect your result.

First off, we'll take a look at the Technique option under Elements. You have 2 options in the drop down menu and they're pretty self explanatory. The first one, Softer will obviously result in a softer transition between the two colors and the second one Precise will result in a sharper one. The next important option is Size and this obviously will change the size of the glow, or embedding effect. Last, but not least comes the Range option. This option is fairly important because for this effect, it changes how well you can see the inner shadow, or the black glow around the circle. The larger the Range is the less shadow you'll see, and the smaller it is, the more you will see. The embedding effect can obviously look in many different ways, but for the sake of tutorial use the settings I preferred which are listed bellow:


This is what your image should look like right now:

The embedding effect has already been created, however with just several more minutes of touching it up, we'll be able to make it look much, much better. And since that's the type of tutorials we feature at WDT, lets continue!

First we'll start by making the background under the circle a little bit darker, and the background above the circle a little bit lighter. We can easily do this with the Brush Tool (B) and a Feathered Brush. You can use one of the Basic Brushes, and change its size to roughly 180px, based on the size of your circle. Start by creating a new layer and place it under your Circle layer. Choose the color black (#000000), and with a Feathered Brush, click once about 10-20 pixels under the center of your circle. Create another layer under your Circle layer and do the same thing but using white (#FFFFFF) as your color and click once 10-20 pixels above the center of your circle. Next play around a little bit with positioning your feathered brush strokes and the alpha of your layers until you get a desired effect similar to the one bellow. If you feel that maybe the bottom dark effect isn't dark enough, duplicate that layer and then change the opacity of the new layer until you get the desired effect. Here is my result:


Since the bottom of the background is a little darker, it would make sense that the bottom of the circle should be the same. Create a new layer above the Circle layer, select the new layer and while holding CTRL down left click on the layer Circle to create a selection of the circle (make sure you click on the little square in the layer and not on the text). Next select the Gradient Tool (G) and choose the gradient Foreground to Transparent. Change your main color to black (#000000) by pressing D on your keyboard and then, drag from the bottom of the circle selection towards the top. Afterwards either play with your layer's alpha or try the gradient again until you get a result similar to the following:


One more detail and then we're done with our foundation. Create a new layer, place it under the Circle layer and obtain the selection of the circle as we did earlier. Again, create a vertical gradient just like before and next go to Select > Modify > Contract and contract your selection by 2-3 pixels. Press DELETE on your keyboard to clear the content in your new selection and then CTRL+D to deselect everything. Next go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, choose 3 for the value and press ok. Now holding the SHIFT key, and using your Move Tool (V) drag the blurred gradient down a little bit to create a little indent effect at the bottom of the circle like this:

Now that we've created our foundation, it's time to add the realism to our design. Up to this point, reaching the same results as mine has been fairly easy. From this point on however, each step will take a little bit of your own creativity, sense of design and of course dexterity. You might not get the exact same result I will, however this part of the tutorial is so much fun that is definitely worth experimenting.

So off we go! We'll start off by creating the shadows around the sphere. This step I prefer to perform by using several layers so that I don't have to go back from the beginning if I don't like the way it ends up looking; however you can also do it on one layer alone. Create a new layer on top of the Circle layer, obtain the selection of the circle and then using your Gradient Tool (G) and a Foreground to Transparent gradient, start shading in the sides of the circle. You'll want to get the bottom and the bottom left part of the circle darker than the top and top right. When applying the gradients, think as if the point where you started each time were the tips of a star with many rays, and every time you ended in the center of the star. It may take you a few attempts to get a nice uniform gradient. Here's what mine looks like:

Now we'll move on to the center highlights. Create a new layer above the Circle layer. Using the Brush Tool (B) and a Feathered Brush roughly half the size of your circle, put a single dot over the part of the sphere that shines. Adjust the alpha of your layer until you feel that it looks good (I had to tone my layer down to 60% Alpha). Next, on another new layer above the Circle layer, using a much smaller feathered brush, somewhere around 8-12px, place two dots to give it that extra glow look. Here's my result:

Next, we'll add a little bit of a glow in the bottom left portion of the sphere and the top right, to give it that extra effect. Instead of using white to create the glow, use a color that's very close to the sphere's color and on a new layer above the Circle layer start applying a few short gradients from the bottom left towards the center of the circle (I used #FF4545 as my color). Afterwards, apply some longer gradients on the top right part of the circle only this time use white(#FFFFFF) as your color. Here's my result:

Lastly, to add some more details, I applied a blue gradient in the top right portion of the circle on a new layer above all the other layers, and changed its blending mode to Overlay. Above all the layers again, on a new layer I also created a black gradient from the bottom left corner of the image towards the top right and also had its blending mode changed to Overlay. Here is my final result:


You can download the final source files here.

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Thanks again!
The WebDTools team.

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