How to Create a Spinning Orb With Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is used frequently by graphics artists the world over. It is suitable for any number of projects from creating ads and fliers to adding special effects to videos. One thing that it is often used for is to create animated GIFs for clip art. When you are creating a webpage, you may want to jazz the site up with animated GIFs, such as a spinning orb. If you would like to create a spinning orb graphic for your webpage, then you can do so in Photoshop.
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Instructions
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1
Open Photoshop. Select "File" from the menu and click "New." In the document-sizing dialog that pops up, make the size what ever you want for you graphics, though generally animated GIFs are fewer than 100 pixels across. Make the background transparent and click "OK."
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2
Select the "Elliptical Marquee" tool. In the options at the top set the "Size Ratio" to fixed and use it to draw a large circle in the middle of the canvas. Use the "Paintbucket" tool to fill this sphere with the color of you choice.
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3
Click on the "New Layer" icon four times. In each one of these layers, create a smaller sphere filled with a different color than the main sphere. Position them roughly along the "equator" of the larger sphere.
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4
Select all the layers and select "Layer" from the menu and click "Group Layers." Now right-click on the the group and select "Duplicate Group." Select the first group and hide the second one.
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5
Position the smaller spheres so the small sphere on the left extends almost completely off the larger sphere and the smaller one on the right extends slightly off. You want them to be an equal distance apart but to form a line that dips slightly in the center. Use the "Magic Wand" tool to select the larger sphere.
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6
Hold down "Shift," "Ctrl" and "I" to invert the selection. Now select the layers with the smaller extending spheres and hit "Delete" to trim them.
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7
Select all the layers in the group. Select "Layer" from the menu and click "Merge." Now select "Filter," "Render" and "Lighting Effects." In the dialog, use a spotlight to create a spotlight lighting effect from the lower right. Click "OK."
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8
Select the second group. Repeat Steps 5 to 7 except that smaller spheres in Step 5 should be reversed horizontally, with the one on the right extending almost completely off the larger sphere and the one on the left extending only slightly off. You now have two layers.
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9
Select "Window" and click "Animation." In the timeline that appears at the bottom ,click on the little drop-down menu on the upper right. From the options, select "Make Frames From Layers."
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10
Click on the "Tweening" button under the timeline and in the dialog add two new layers. This will create a blur effect when played. Click "Play" to preview your animation. Now select "File" and click "Save for Web or Devices." Save the animation as a GIF file.
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