Colored Orb in Photoshop 6 or 7

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24.) Add a blank layer above all other layers.

25.) Make a circular selection slightly smaller than your circle shape below. hold the shift key down to make a perfect circle. Hold down the spacebar as you are dragging out the marquee if you need to reposition it.

26.) Now click the "subtract from selection" button on the options bar and draw another circle selection that overlaps all but a tiny sliver of the original circle selection. You want your selection to look like a crescent shape... something like this:

27.) You can deselect and try again if you don't get it right the first time. When you're happy with the selection, click new selection (instead of subtract from selection) in the options bar, so you don't confuse yourself the next time you use the selection tools.

28.) Fill the selection with white. Deselect.

29.) Use the eraser tool with a soft edged brush to erase away some of the pointy tips on your crescent shape.

30.) Filter Blur > Gaussian Blur. Radius 1.0 - 1.5 pixels.

31.) Set the blend mode to screen on the highlight layer.

32.) Use the move tool to reposition the highlight if you need to.

33.) Try clicking the eye on the highlight layer to turn it off and see what a difference it makes.

34.) Now you may be wondering why we did that gradient overlay because you can't see it, can you? Click on your background layer and fill it with another color.

Here it is with a new background color.

The layers palette for the finished image:

Download the final layered PSD file here.
Right click (Windows) or click and hold (Mac) and choose "Save Target As..."

Depending on your background color, you may find that the overall effect can be improved by adjusting the opacity of the gradient overlay in layer styles. That's the beauty of layer styles-- they can be continually tweaked until you are perfectly satisfied!

You can change the coloring of the entire orb by picking different colors in the drop shadow, inner shadow, and inner glow effects. Two variations are shown here.

If you click the New Style button on the layer styles dialog, it will save the combination of effect to your styles palette and you will be able to apply it to any object in a single click. Save it using as many color combinations as you think you will need.

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