Shading A Sphere
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This is a very simple way to give any circle a 3D appearance. It uses the principles any first year art student employs when learning to shade a with a pencil. You might find it useful when you decide to tackle the job of making metallic interfaces that are so popular.
Resources- Any version of PSP
Let's get started
- Open new image 500 x 500 white background. Add a new layer.
- Get the circle selection tool and draw a large circle in the center of the canvas.
- Now decide where the light source will be. In this case I have chosen the top upper right. Remember that the further from the light source the darker the color, and the closer to the light source the lighter the color.
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- Open a new image 50 x 150 white background to make a color palette. Get the airbrush tool hardness, opacity, and density all set to 100, size 20.
- Next we need to decide the basic color of the sphere. I have chosen blue but you may choose any color you wish. We need 5 intensities of the same hue (5 shades of blue). First click on the foreground swatch to bring up the materials palette (color palette v7). Click on the outside ring to choose the color range. Next click right in the center of the colors in the rectanglar area (I'm not sure what this is called lol). This will be your base color. Apply it to your palette you created in the above step. The red arrow in the below image indicates my base color. Now choose 2 colors above and 2 colors below the base color and apply them as well. These are the 5 intensities you will use.
- Now on the original image flood fill the circle with your base color. Add a new raster layer.
- Get the airbrush tool size 82 (size depends on the size of your circle so you may have to adjust it) and add the colors as shown and in the order as shown. Dark to light with darkest being furthest away from the light source.
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- Now give this layer a gaussian blur radius 29.70. Merge the layers and your done.
- If you want the shere to have a brighter intensity as shown below, add a new raster layer and add white and give it a gaussian blur of 14.85.
If you give your sphere a drop shadow remember that the shadow placement will also depend on the light source, or opposite the light source, in this case the shadow will be in the lower left corner. Also remember that the intensity (dark/lightness) of the shadow is determined by the intensity of the light source. So the shadow for the sphere with white added (step 9) will be lighter than the sphere with no white added (step 8) Refer to the finished image for placement.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and found it easy to follow. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to .
