Posted: 10 April 2007, 07:20:46PM Post subject: Gimp Tutorial: Making An Aqua Ball/Blue Orb
Make an aqua ball/blue orb Level: Beginner
Start off by opening GIMP and creating a new image (CTRL+N) of 420x300. Create a new layer and name it "shadow" with a fill type of transparency.
Press E to select the ellipitcal select tool, then press and hold SHIFT and click and drag to make a circular selection. Fill the selection with black (SHIFT+B for fill tool).
Create a new layer named "border" with a fill type of transparency, then fill it with #0018D0. Create another layer named "color" with a fill type of transparency, then go Select > Feather and set it to 45px. Set the foreground color to #66E6FF and the background color to #0018D0, then press L for the gradient tool and click and drag from bottom to top of the selection while holding CTRL (to keep it straight) then release. Press CTRL+I to invert the selection then CTRL+K, this will remove the fuzzy blur around the orb.
Now clear the selection by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+A or by going Select > None. Create one more layer called "highlight" with a fill type of transparency, then make a small circular selection (E) in the upper half of the orb (if your selection is not where you want it, press and hold ALT then click and drag outside of the selection to move it (Linux users press CTRL+ALT)).
Now select the gradient tool (L) and change the gradient type to "FG to Transparent":
Press D then X to reset and swap the colors so that we now have white as the foreground color and black as the background color. Click and drag from top to bottom of the small selection, you should have something like this:
Deselect the selection (CTRL+SHIFT+A).
To finish off, select the "shadow" layer in the layers dialogue, then go Filters > Blur > Gaussain Blur and set the blur radius to 15px for both horizontal and vertical.
Saving the image for use: select the "shadow" layer then go Image > Auto Crop Image, now hide the background layer.
It is a little big for general use, so you may want to scale it down a bit. Go Image > Scale Image to change it. When your happy with the size and want to save it, go File > Save a Copy and save it as "BlueOrb.png".
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