Magnifying Glass

Final result of this tutorial:

This tutorial is not of the easy ones. It has many steps, but I will divide it in 3 parts: making handle, making frame of the lens and making lens.

First we are going to make frame for the lens.

1. Open a new document 500x500px, color doesn't matter. I'll take some light grey: RGB=200, 200, 200.

2. Make new blank layer and call it FRAME.

3. Take the Ellipse tool and holding the SHIFT key make a circular selection. Fill it with black. Don't deselect it. You should get something like this:

4. Go to SELECT menu - MODIFY - CONTRACT and give it a value of 7px.

5. Press DELETE key. Now you can deselect it. Your layer should look something like this:

6. Now go to LAYER STYLE menu, and turn on BEVEL AND EMBOSS and DROP SHADOW with these values:

Now your layer should look something like this:

This is all about lens frame. Now lens:

7. With a MAGIC WAND tool select inside circle of lens frame we just made.

8. Make a new blank layer.

9. With a PAINT BUCKET tool fill selection with any color you want. I'll take red. It looks like this:

10. Reduce FILL OPACITY in LAYERS palette to 0%.

11. Enter the layer STYLE menu again and set these values:

Pay attention on INNER SHADOW - BLEND MODE setting and BEVEL AND EMBOSS - DIRECTION and SHADOW MODE settings. After this, your lens should look like this:

Now, we are going to make lens highlight.

12. Make a new blank layer.

13. With a ELLIPSE MARQUEE tool make oval selection. Something like this:

13. Set FOREGROUND COLOR to white. Take GRADIENT tool, click on FOREGROUND TO TRANSPARENT in OPTIONS palette.

and make gradient like this:

14. Move it and rotate it to look like this:

Reduce it's layer opacity to 80%.

15. Make a new blank layer.

16. Take the BRUSH TOOL, pick some round brush and set it's diameter to 12px and HARDNESS to 30%. Make a white spot like this:

And we're done with a lens! Just one final part - handle.

17. Make a new blank layer. Name it HANDLE HIGHLIGHT.

18. Take the RECTANGULAR MARQUEE TOOL and make selection 20px by 130px.

19. Set FOREGROUND to black and BACKGROUND to white color.

20. Take the GRADIENT TOOL again, but this time pick FOREGROUND TO BACKGROUND GRADIENT from the drop-down list in the Options palette. Pick REFLECTED GRADIENT and turn on the REVERSE check box in the Options palette.

Fill selection with gradient like this:

21. Press CTRL + T (FREE TRANSFORM) and holding the CTRL key transform this rectangle into this:

22. Now, duplicate this layer. Name it HANDLE. Fill it with black. Put it underneath HANDLE HIGHLIGHT layer.

23. HANDLE HIGHLIGHT effect look too strong at the moment.. Put this layer's BLEND MODE to HARD LIGHT. Reduce it's opacity to 65%. Now it should look like this:

24. Take ELIPTICAL MARQUEE TOOL again and draw a small ellipse. Fill it with black. Something like this.

25. Put it like this:

26. Make a copy of small ellipse layer. Merge it with a layer HANDLE. We'll need it for correct look of Drop Shadow later.

27. Link all three layers that make handle. Rotate them all together and put them like this.

28. And now we are going to add some DROP SHADOW to handle. Select the layer HANDLE. Go to LAYER STYLE menu and turn DROP SHADOW on. Put these values:

You shall, finally, have your magnifier.

You can put it in some document and make magnifying effect too. You can do it easily with BLOAT TOOL in LIQUIFY FILTER.. Here's some example.

It's famous Photoshop's Ducky.