Golf Ball

Photoshop Tutorial
Phil has provided an excellent tutorial on making a realistic Golfball in
Photoshop.

INGREDIENTS

Layers

Selections

Patterns

Lighting effects

Filters

Transform

Difficulty 8/10 More Great Tutorials

by Phil The Rodent PhotoshopCAFE home

1. Make a new canvas. Here, I used 800 x 800 pixels, 72 dpi, RGB, background white
2. Invert your background to make it black
2. Make a new layer
3. Use your circular marquee to draw a circle and fill it with white
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4. Make a new document, 20 pixels x 20 pixels, RGB, background transparent
5. Use your circular marquee to draw a circle and fill it with black

6. Edit: Define pattern (call it Dimples)

7. Go back to your original document (Ctrl-Tab) and make a new layer
8. Ctrl-click Layer 1 (the white circle you created) and press Shift-Delete to bring up your
Fill options dialogue
9. Select Pattern, and fill with your Dimples pattern

10. Press Ctrl-T to bring up Free Tansform and rotate this layer 45 degrees. Press Enter.
11. Filter:Blur:Gassian Blur 2.0 pixels
12. Now Ctrl-click Layer 1, and hit Ctrl-F to repeat the blur

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13. Filter>Distort>Spherize 100%

14. Now we'll finish the map by creating the contour of the ball itself. Press D to reset
your palette, press X to invert the colours, and select your gradient tool (G).
15. Select radial gradient, foreground to background and change the opacity to 50%.
Make sure your original circle is still selected, and draw a gradient from the center of the
circle to the outer edge

Now we have a successful map to

apply lighting effects.
16. Create a new layer, hold down alt,
and merge visible. This will be our
rendering channel. Select all, copy,
create a new channel, and paste.
17. Hit RGB composite, and go back to
the merged layer
18. Press Shift-Delete and fill with 50%
Grey
19. Now go into Filter:Render:Lighting
effects
Now here's where the fun begins. you
can create whatever lighting you like.
For this one in particular, I used a
spotlight and an omni light. Change
your texture channel to Alpha 1 (the
one we created) and set white is high and height 50.
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20. Hit okay.

21. Now we'll delete the extra material. Ctrl-click the original circle layer, invert the
selection, and hit Backspace. Good. It's just a little harsh. No sweat, we'll lighten it up a
bit with levels.

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22. Press Ctrl-L to go into levels, and drag the Black triangle on the gradient at the
bottom of the dialogue up to 125. I also brought the grey point down to 1.30
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22. Now we'll just finish it up with some layer effects. Hide the two source layers, and
double click the final render to get into layer effects.
Here I used the following...
Inner Shadow
Hard Light with Black
Angle -159
Distance 49 px
Choke 0%
Size 62 px
Colour Overlay
Blending mode Color
Colour #929AA0
Opacity 100%
Gradient Overlay
Blending Mode Overlay
Style: Linear
Angle 24 degrees
Scale 70%
I also made the background white again.
Here is the final before touhups...

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