[thelist] Three dimensional button with Photoshop

[Rob Smith]

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>Can somebody tell me, how to do this? Any easy way with Photoshop?

To make spheres from circles requires a bit of imagination on your part. The
key is the proper use of shadows and highlights. Last I remember you could
do radial shading/blurs in Illustrator. The later versions of Photoshop may
have this feature as part of the gradient/fill window, I'm just not sure.

To make a 3D Sphere in Photoshop (instructions assume you know how to do the
basics)

1. Draw a circle with the round selection tool or the dashed circle.
2. Fill the circle.
3. Now pick your round selection tool again and hold down the (pc) alt (Mac)
option key.
   The curser will have a minus sign on it.
4. Draw another circle just slightly above and to the right of the current
one.
   If you did this right, you'll have a half moon selection.
5. Grab you air brush tool, with a soft not hard spray, and reduce the
pressure to about %40 percent in the options tab.
6. Proceed to fill in the half moon selection with a darker hue of the
original color.
   Stay away from the inner crescent of the half moon when doing this.
7. Deselect everything.
8. Grab your air brush tool again, increase the pressure and choose a
lighter hue. Make the highlight on the sphere.

With a little practice you'll make great sphere's in no time.

If you want to get a little more advanced, try to simulate the Phong value
(shininess) of the object.

1. Do a screen shot of your mouse curser (on a white background).
2. Go in Photoshop and select (round tool) the shot of the mouse.
3. Choose the built in filter, Spherize... and click ok.
4. Copy, paste onto your new 3d sphere, and decrease the opacity of your
mouse curser.
or just select the mouse portion and do a guessing blur to create that
effect.