The Fastest Glass Sphere in the West

1. Create a new image. Make it perfectly square, say 600 pixels x 600 pixels, 100 DPI. For those people accustomed to working with ruler measurements, that works out to 6 inches squared. Set your mode to RGB, and the background to transparent.

2. Fill the image with Black, 100%, and duplicate the layer.

3. With the duplicate background layer (or in this case 'Layer 1 copy'), go to Filter>Render>Lens Flare. Select the standard 50-300mm Zoom, and bump up the brightness to 150.

4. Go to Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates. In the Polar Coordinates Pop-up, click on Polar to Rectangular.

5. Go to Image>Rotate Canvas>Flip Vertical.

6. Re-run the Polar Coordinates Filter (Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates), but this time check 'Rectangular to Polar'.

7. This sphere makes an excellent foundation for further effects, but we could clean it up a bit to make it more 'effects friendly'. First, we need to get rid of the excess image information around the sphere. Select the Elliptical Marquee. In the Marquee Options Bar, set the Style to Constrained Aspect Ratio. Starting in the upper left corner ( a few pixels from the actual corner) draw out your marquee with the mouse to capture MOST of the sphere. We want a bit of the sphere edge cut off, so leave a little outside of the marquee.

8. Go to Select>Inverse and delete the area around the sphere.

There you have it. As I said before, this is an excellent foundation for other sphere effects, and it comes with all the reflections built right in!

Here is just one example of what a little playing will render.