How to design a 3D look sphere

My first tutorial!! :)

In my first tutorial I will show you how easy it is to create a 2D ball/circle which looks 3D.

Software used: Photoshop. Time: around 10mins. Level: Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced

1. Create a new Photoshop document and give it dimensions of about 200 x 200px.
Resolution doesn't really matter unless you going to use it for print.
So just use the web default of 72dpi.


2. Make a new layer name this ball or circle, choose your desired colour and using the Ellipse tool create a
circle in the centre of your document.

3. Right-click on the circle layer then choose Layer Properties or just double click it.
Tick inner shadow and set Blend Mode:Normal, Opacity:96%, Angle:-123 degrees,
check Use Global Light box is ticked, Distance:26px, Choke:0, Size:27px and leave all other settings as defaults. At this stage it should resemble mine below.

4. To make our circle look more real go to the Filter menu, select Render, and Lighting Effects.
Since our source of light is already coming from the top front right we want the light shining on the ball hitting the same area. So choose the settings just like below. You can adjust the colour of the light to suit your choice and also on the background ( Layer 0 ) add a dark colour to create a sort of attraction/spotlight. Or just leave the background plain .

5. Last step is to create a new Layer ( Shift + Ctrl + N). Name this layer shadow.
Yes you guessed it!! We are to going to create a shadow for our ball.
Check that colour black is selected and using the Ellipse tool drag to create a thin oval below the ball. The central point below of the ball is where the shadow should begin or adjust it to suit your math. Below is our finished ball.