Cool blue flame kinda ball tutorial

Layer styles in photoshop are power. Meanwhile most people should have learned that. But it takes two steps, no more, to create a cool looking glass ball, almost apple style. However to make this look the way i have it here, it takes a bit more finetuning. Fear not, it's all rather simple if you know the basic. I am using the german version of Photoshop CS 4, so here a handy translation for you: >>Click me<<.

First of all grab this >>PSD HERE<<. As you can see i added some layers. The first is a brightness/contrast layer and the second is a curves layer. Take a look at them but do not modify them yet, you can do that later. There is also the "content" layer, which luckily contains some flames, we will use these to create the texture. You can move the flames around a little until you have found a section that you like. You can also scale them, making them smaller will increase the level of detail.


Alright, now it's time to make our ball here. It's easy, just select the elipse tool. Now holding down shift we make a selection, like the one you can see on the right. Now, once you have done that, make sure you are on the content layer and press the mask button in the layer menu. Photoshop will create a mask for you. What you have to remember are two things: When creating a mask like this Photoshop will select the mask, which means you have to switch back to the layer, by clicking it's thumbnail. Number two is that the mask and the ontent are now linked. If you want to move the flames around, but not the mask you have to unlink them by clicking the little chain icon that is between the thumbnails of the layer and the mask.


Ok, now lets double click our layer and bring up the layer effects. I added two effects: An inner glow (Normal, 75% opacity, size 79px, leave the rest as it is) and a gradient overlay (Hard light, 60%, move it up a little and use the standart black to white gradient, white is top of course). Does not look quite right, hm ? That of course because the color is not set yet. Press cntr-u and select colorize, now select the color you want, don't forget to play with the saturation.



Alright, here we go. Scaling and moving around the flames will lead to different results, also you should check the setting of the gradient if you want more or less light. Moving around the gradient will also help. This is the basic technique i used.

Boy, for a short and easy tutorial i sure wrote a lot. Enjoy your ball! <.<