CocaColin

Wow, I really have been staring at this too long.. is it my imagination or does the original example have a little shading all the way around? Of course at the top left there is a lot, but how about the bottom right?

Sanby

That's a good start but I think what your mising that would make it look a bit more complete is the bottom shadow. If you notice the bottom right of the glass there is a tiny bit of a shoadow. You don't consiously realize it's there but it adds to the overall effect of the sphere. Here is my crack at it. I can send you the .psd if you like this and find that it might help.

Sanby

CocaColin

That one's quite a bit nicer than mine.. I'm relieved I'm not the only one seeing shadowing there... thanks

CocaColin

This is my latest attempt, getting better? Anything else I should add?

Sanby

Yeah that's looking a lot better. But maybe tone down the background, it hard to see the sphere.

Sanby

ladyfinger007

It's nice... maybe play with the background to distort it, using spherize filter...

The key is to play with the shadows to give substance to the glass

This tutorial is about drawing, but the technique can be used on Photorealistic images :

http://www.nethersphere.com/howto_jewels.html

Check this tutorial also :
http://www.russellbrown.com/tips/pdf...dknockouts.pdf
http://www.russellbrown.com/tips/pdf...dknockouts.pdf

wbiss

Looking good CocaColin! [righton] Just a couple of things that I would do.

1. Add some distortion to the background behind the ball (a natural phenomenon)
2. Add a drop shadow
3. Add an interior highlight
4. Soften edges

This is a "quick & dirty" example, using only your single layer gif file. You can do a much better job working with your original layers!

CocaColin

Well this is the effect on the base that I plan on using it. I think a few of the improvements mentioned would not really work on this but I did use a few of them. Let me know what you think and thanks for all the great advice... really! I learned a lot
hmm just noticed that it is still really big, the one I am making is quite a bit smaller and looks better that way

wbiss

Aaaaaah... it's a "dome" effect you were after!
Now that looks really great CocaColin! [righton]

Smoke420

CocaColin, that would do really good for like a winamp 3 skin (if you know the coding) or something! It looks great [righton] [righton] What's it for?