On popular request, I've decided to submit a tutorial on how to make those wonderful glossy glass orbs, which is a similar effect as in the MSN lil dude . I will do my best to use screen shots of important steps, but overal this does depend on the feeling and how strong you want the effect to be.

Step 1 : Open Photoshop.
Open a new document, I used 500px wide and 500 high, with a white background. You can make the background any color, but I do recommend using a background color, otherwise it will become harder to see the effect, also depending on your background color you will need to adjust the strength of the effects later on. Make it a habit that you create a new layer for ALL actions, that way you can easily go back without losing too much data.

Step 2 : Making the orb.
Set your foreground color to #33cc33 (It's a not so bright, yet clear green). Then select your ellipse tool and
while you're at it, make a new layer.



Be sure to have Paths selected on top (the tool property bar) and then when you choice the drop down box in that same bar, you make sure to have circle selected (this will make sure your ellipse is a circle, another way of achieving the same goal is to hold down shift while you drag your mouse to make the ellipse.)



Now you can draw your circle, bear in mind you won't see a filling yet. But the reason I use a path for this, is
because it looks better than marquee (no jagged edges), and you can go back to reselect the path later on for a second orb etc. You should now see a thin circle on your canvas, while you still have your ellipse tool selected, you can right click and choice FILL PATH.



Then you will get a pop-up window, called Fill Path, make sure you have everything set as in the screenshot, which are the default values.



NOTE : In the pop up window you get after clicking FILL PATH, you can use the drop down box to fill with any color you wish, the reason I opted to use the foreground color is because for the sake of this tutorial it's slightly easier.

Right now your canvas should be showing a wonderfully perfect circle filled with the color you selected.

Step 3 : The Highlight.
Now we will add the highlight, set your foreground color to white and make a new layer. You should still have your path active, if this is not the case, go to your layer palette, next to the Layer tab, you should have two more tabs; one called Channels and one called Paths. Go to the Paths tab and click the Work Path (you will see a small preview of the path, just like the Layer Pallete).

NOTE : If you do not have the Paths tab, then go to Window > Paths.

Select your Path Select Tool, you'll find it right above the Pen Tool and on the left of the Type Text tool. (You
can also hit A on your keyboard) Right click on the Circle Path, you will get the same drop down menu as before.

This time I want you to select the Make Selection option.

Here's where it gets a big more personal, if you practice this a bit, you'll learn to get the best results to meet
your liking. Select the Gradient Fill tool (hidden under the Paint Bucket for those of you who haven't toyed in PS that much).



As you can see in the screenshot, you need to select the Foreground to transparent (which is why you had to set white as foreground color), if you don't have the standard set of gradients open, click on the lil right arrow (on the graphic indicated with the *) and click Reset Gradients.

Hold down shift (this is to make sure the gradient is in a perfect straight line) while you drag the gradient from the top of the selection to about 75% down. Your image should now look like the one below. (Quality is set to low, so it would load faster.)

Step 4 : Distortion.
We will now distort the gradient we just applied to make it look more realistic. First of all, make sure you do NOT have the path selected as well, whether you keep the selection live or not, is up to you. To deselect the path, you go back to the Paths Tab, and click on the Icon to make a new Path (same look and location as the new layer button).

Go up to Edit > Transform > Distort. There you will be changing the look of the gradient to meet what I have in my lil screenshot, again the quality of the image is toned down.



Now, you duplicate the highlight layer, you drag the layer to the New Layer Icon OR right click on the layer and click Duplicate Layer. Set the lower layer (the original highlight layer to 70% opacity - you can change this afterwards if you feel it is too bright.)

Cut into two parts due to the image restrictions.

Step 5 : Adding a hue change.
Good job on getting so far and still wanting to continue Now you'll change the hue of the top highlight layer so it's realistic. First, make sure that the top layer (the duplicated highlight layer which should have 100% opacity still) is selected, then go up to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. Now you'll have to move that layer so it almost touches the bottom of the orb. Then you hit Ctrl+U, this brings up the Hue and Saturation box. Here's a screenshot of the values I entered. It is very important to check COLORIZE.



Now a quick check of what you should have now.



Stap 6 : Making it real, because honestly it don't look good huh?
To be honest, it's a boring looking orb now, and it looks far from real. But no worries, you'll get there. First of all, Ctrl + click on the green base orb, so you select the orb in full. Make sure your hue change layer is selected and apply a gaussian blur (Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur) of about 20, depending on how big you made the orb this will vary. The smaller the orb, the smaller the blur. This is something you'll have to test to see.

Your orb should look something like this now.



The very last thing you should do is apply some layer effects to the orb itself.
Select your base orb, and or right click and select Blending Options or click the lil F at the bottom of the Layer Palette. Then apply an Inner Glow with the following settings, the size does vary depending on the size of the orb - experience and practice will help you there. The color is #217d1e.



Final image :

HOLY .... What's wrong with everyone on this board - or rather what the hecks wrong with me ??? Everyone's turning out to be such excellent graphic designer.. save rotten old me

Thanks moonwitch, now I can finally get onto converting it into Fireworks, and then use it to recreate the Computing Host logo .

I just wish I could tolerate Photoshop to use it. Maybe the merger of Adobe and Macromedia will result in Fireworks 9 being a half-way system incorporating advanced bitmap features of Photoshop.

Nice tutorial. I really like the end result, and I'll have to try this later.

Good one. Even though there are MANY glossy orb tutorials out there, this I think is one of the best. Of course I'm talking about this style of orb.

The "Foreground to transparent" doesn't work in CS (Version 8). Everything is filled White with NO transparency what-so-ever. You need CS2 or better to do this or there is a step missing.

-reply by Visitor

BOOK MARKED!! I HAVE TO TRY THIS LATER!! I like this forum =)

Cool tutorial. To bad I use GIMP and Inkscape. Even though this tutorial is about two years old can someone who's tried this post a screen shot of their layers list with showing the order and what is on or off. I want to see if I can create something from this for a Halloween advertisement (Witches orb(s) or a pumpkin. Or like the ghosts from Super Mario RPG.

How do you set Photoshop up so you can get a forecolor? Sorry, I am new to Photoshop...

I don't understand this part....