creating a glass ball - part 1

The first step is to find yourself a good source picture. I got mine from http://www.sxc.hu
(You will need to register a free account at the site and make sure you notify the author to let them know that you will be using their image.)

Open your source file in photoshop and create a new layer. (ctrl shift N). Take the Elliptical Marquee tool (M) and make a selection. TIP: Hold down shift key whilst making your selection to make a perfect circle. Once you have made your selection, take your paint bucket tool (G). Change the foreground colour to D6D3C0 and fill the selection.

Next to add some layer styles... Click on your layer styles icon in your layers palette. (The little 'f' and scroll to inner shadow). Set the colour to white (it will probably be black to start with), set the blend mode to linear dodge, the opacity from around 40-45%, the angle to around -54 degrees, the distance to 50px and the size to 68px. Your image should now look like this:

In this step we will start by creating a new layer. (ctrl shift N). Next we will create a clipping mask by right clicking on the top layer and scroll to 'create clipping mask'. Now change the background colour in your tool bar to 65645F. We now have our colours to create a gradient. Select the gradient tool by right clicking the paint bucket tool and selecting gradient tool. In the top tool bar, make sure the linear gradient is selected - that is the first in the horizontal list of gradients. Next make sure reverse, dither and transparency are selected. Start your gradient directly in the middle of your ball and pull to the bottom right. Stop just before the ball starts changing colour from where you added the inner glow. Your ball should now look like this:

We now want to change our foreground and background colours back to white. You can do this by pressing D. Make sure white is the foreground colour. Go back to your gradient tool and instead of the linear gradient, we will now select the next one in line - the radial gradient. this is directly on the right. On the layer we are currently working on, create a layer mask by clicking the layer mask icon at the bottom of your layer pallet. (it looks like a rectangle with a circle in it). Create your gradient by starting in the middle again, this time drag it right to the edge of the shape. You should now have this: