New Year's Ball Drop

Illuminate your new year with a special new year's ball that will be sure to brighten up your designs.

1. Create a new document in Photoshop 400 x 400.

2. Use the rectangular marquee tool to make a selection that will be the pole.

3. Use the gradient tool with black and white as the default colors and fill the selection based on what you feel looks good.

4. Now go to Edit > Stroke. Use the settings below.

5. Now deselect the layer and you will see the pole.

6. Create a new layer and use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to center a circle on the pole. Change the foreground color to a lighter gold and the background to a darker gold. Then select the gradient tool and change the type to "Radial Gradient" Look below to see where that setting is located.

7. Now fill the circle you selected with that gradient. Play around with it to make it perfect.

8. Now for the Sparkling Lights. Select the Elliptical Tool again. Make a new layer. Now make small little white dots all over the ball by filling in the small selections you make with white. I figured out the smaller the dots, the better it looks.

9. Now go to Blending Options and add an outer glow. Settings are below.

10. You are all done now! Check it out below.

11. This doesn't really look like a New Year's Ball Drop unless you have some good backgrounds. I added in some different backgrounds to make the ball effect stand out!

12. And in case you were wondering, my inspiration for this tutorial were the new year of 2006 and these two images below.