Designing a crystal ball in Photoshop

Designing a crystal ball in Photoshop

This is cool technique I’ve discovered which uses the Polar Coordinates filter in Photoshop to make a globe or a planet.

Start with picture (I chose one of some nice clouds). You may or may not at this point convert it into a square, but at some stage you will need to. As the edge of the picture will end up in the middle it’s a good idea to get it all the same colour. To do this draw a feathered rectangular Marquee (M) a little bit inside your picture frame, inverse the selection (Cmd/Cntl-Shift-I) and fill with a harmonious colour (see below top right).

Designing a crystal ball in Photoshop

Now, go Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates… check Polar to Rectangular, go Image > Rotate Canvas > 180º, and then Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates… check Rectangular to Polar and you should have something that looks like above bottom left.

To further increase the spherical illusion go Filter > Distort > Spherize, choosing Normal +100%. You will notice that this leaves a funny crossed shape in the middle of the sphere. I knocked this out with a feathered circular marquee filled with a blue that merges in.

After a bit of brightening, re-cutting out and adding a drop shadow, you will have created another world! This’ll work with any picture.

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Comments

  1. Gabriel says:

    This one is a cool tip! I made a crystal ball before but it was cartoonish. I haven’t tried a realistic crystal ball like the one above. Thanks Rob! The procedure is short but effective.

  2. Rob Cubbon says:

    Thanks again for the encouragement, Gabriel. I should have said you can download a Photoshop action for the Polar Coordinates bit at ShutterFreaks here
    http://www.shutterfreaks.com/Actions/FreeStuff/CrystalBall/CrystalBall.html

  3. Peter says:

    Yet another awesome tip. I don’t know how you do it. you keep amazing me with your magic.

  4. Nate says:

    That’s awesome dude,turned out great.
    Anybody know of a website that has free graphic designs on it?

  5. kavitha says:

    cooooooool blue

  6. ayonk says:

    cool man,,,, thanks

  7. amuletts says:

    OMG! You are a lifesaver. At the moment I have crystal balls appearing in mulitple frames of my comic, and your method speeds up making them NO END! Thankyou.

  8. Rob Cubbon says:

    Cool, amuletts, glad to save you time!

  9. Dale says:

    Thanks for posting this! I needed to create a crystal ball for a project I’m working on and my Photoshop skills are pretty basic.

    In fact, they’d be practically non-existent if not for people like you who post these tutorials, and Google for helping me find them :-)

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