How to Create Mental Sphere

Resources

• Mountains view
• Yoga

Step 1

Open Mountain Photo on Photoshop. Go to Image > Image Size and change width to 1000px and height to 664px.

Step 2

Open Yoga Photo and copy it to Mountain Photo. Select Yoga Layer and press Ctrl+T to reduce size of photo like shown below.

Step 3

With Yoga layer selected, use the Polygonal Lasso Tool (Feather: 0 px, Anti-alias selected) to select women.

Don´t forget that we have some landscape areas inside of selection. Hold Alt button and using Polygonal Lasso Tool deselect those areas.

Press Ctrl+Shift+I to inver selection and press Delete button to clear selected area.

Step 4

Remove selection with Select > Deselect, then correct brightness and contrast with Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast:

Step 5

Select background layer (Mountain). Make round selection with Elliptical Marquee Tool on it.

Press Ctrl+J to duplicate selected area to new layer. Select content layer by pressing Ctrl and clicking on thumbnail layer on layers. Load sphere selection by going to Select > Load Selection. Then apply Filter > Distort > Spherize:

Step 6

With selection still active, create new layer above all layers and fill it with black color.

Apply Filter > Render > Clouds to this layer.

Step 7

Apply Filter > Distort > Spherize.

Step 8

Change layer mode to Screen and lower opacity to 57%.

Step 9

With selection still active, create new layer above all layers and fill it with black color.

Step 10

Deselect area with Ctrl+D an update layer opacity to 0%. After that go to Layer > Layer Style > Inner Glow and apply style with following settings:

Final Image

:::: Transparent Glass Lettering ::::

Transparent Glass Lettering in Photoshop

Step 1:

BACKGROUND LAYER

To begin this tutorial, we’ll first give ourselves a nice background gradient. Now while most gradients are two-color, in Photoshop you can actually make much more complex gradients by clicking on the Gradient icon in the top left. You’ll get a panel showing the gradient and you can add more colors to it. In this case, I’ve used three colors to make a gradual change from green to a set of blues.

Multi-color gradients can make for a stunning background. I’ve used a Radial Gradient and centered it to the bottom right.

The colors I’ve used are:

Color 1 – #2e5b15

Color 2 – #103533

Color 3 – #090e13

Step 2:

Now we need a letter. I’ve used the letter Q because it’s my favorite, particularly in this serifed style. This is from the font Adobe Caslon Pro which I suspect came with my Photoshop install–although who knows, I have way to many fonts to remember! Give your letter a nice blue- green color. I’ve used #41a993.

Step 3:

Now after this, I basically went through all the different types of layer styles and just experimented with them all. You can produce some really wicked combinations with a bit of trying out. The main things I did here were:

• Decrease Fill Opacity to 20%. Fill Opacity makes the layer transparent WITHOUT making the styles transparent. Note that this is DIFFERENT to Opacity which just makes everything see-through.
• Another thing I did was to try changing angles around, using different blending modes, and building the layers up slowly.

In any case, you can see all the exact settings by downloading the sample PSD file from the link on the top right. You can then right click that layer and hit Copy Layer Styles if you just want to paste it into your own file.

Step 4:

So here is the result of my layer styles. It’s a pretty cool-looking style.

Note that I’ve made it look as if the light is coming from the bottom. This matches the direction of my gradient and gives a convincing look. I’ve then also used a fainter set of highlights coming from the other side. This vaguely matches how glass sometimes reflects light about.

Step 5:

Now hold down Ctrl and click on the Q layer to select the shape and add a white to transparent gradient coming from the bottom into a NEW layer.

You can do color to transparent gradients by clicking on the Gradient Tool in the top left and holding it down to see the whole set of gradients (as we did earlier in this tutorial). The second one along is color to transparency. It’s SUCH a useful gradient. Great for this sort of glass/plastic effects in particular.

Now fade this back by changing its blend mode to Overlay.

Step 6:

Now again hold Ctrl and select the Q layer. In a new layer, again add a radial white to transparent gradient, this time coming from the top down as shown.

Fade this one out by setting its opacity to 40%.

Step 7:

Now on the same layer as in the last step, draw an ellipse with the Selection Tool and hit Ctrl+Shift+I to select the inverse. Then hit delete to remove some of that gradient that we just drew.

Basically this makes the white suddenly stop and gives us a glassy feel. Try cutting in different ways to see the different sort of effects you can make.

Step 8:

Now glass shines, so lets add some highlights to make it look really shiny. You can do this by choosing the Custom Shape Tool (U) and then in the top left click on Polygon and then on the down arrow to get options as shown. Tick Star and make sure your indent is set to 99% to make some nice little 5 pointed stars.

Now in a new layer with white as your foreground color, just add some highlighted stars liberally about. It’s best to place them on the most highlighted parts of the Q to make it look like they are sparkles from those highlights.

Step 9:

And there you have the finished product: a glassy lettering style.

:::: Liquid Filled Glass Text ::::

Liquid Filled Glass Text in Photoshop

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Step 1

Start by creating a new document, 1500px by 1000px. Fill the Background with a Linear Gradient using the color #acacac as the Foreground color, and #e1e1e1 as the Background color. Start from the bottom of the file and go upwards.

Step 2

Now, type the text you want to apply the effect on, using the color #dbdbdb, the size 300px, and the font type is “Cooper Std”. Any bold font would be fine, just make sure it is bold.

Duplicate the text layer, and rename both layers as shown in the image below.

Step 3

Double click on the bottom layer (Psdtuts – bottom), and apply the following layer styles:

Step 4

Now, change the Fill value of the top layer (Psdtuts – top) to (0%), then double click on it, and apply the following layer styles:

Step 5

Using the “Rectangle Tool”, draw a rectangle shape that covers the lower half of the text, the color should be #aa4280. Make sure that the rectangle shape layer is between the two text layers (‘Psdtuts – bottom’ and ‘Psdtuts – top’).

Step 6

Select the “Add Anchor Point Tool”, and start adding points at the edges of the letters, where they intersect with the rectangle.

Step 7

Once you’re done, begin adding points in between the edges, these will determine the tops and bottoms of the liquid. After adding the points, use the “Direct Selection Tool” to select those points and move them up and down. You can also use the “Delete Anchor Point Tool” to remove any unwanted points. Continue modifying the points until you’re satisfied with the result.

Step 8

We are going to rasterize the rectangle shape layer, so make a duplicate of the shape layer, then Right Click on the copy, and choose “Rasterize Layer”.
Press the Cmd/Ctrl key, and while you’re still pressing it, Right Click on the icon of one of the text layers to create a selection, then, press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + I to invert the selection, and hit Delete.

Step 9

Double click on the rasterized shape layer, and apply the following styles.

Step 10

Now we’re done, but you can still change the color of the fluid fill simply by adding a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer, and choose the color you like!

Final Image

This is the final result. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.