Snooker Ball Tutorial

This is a demo on how we created a real life looking snooker ball from scratch in Photoshop, firstly, we created a new file,

We added a simple gradient for the background,

On a new layer, Using the "Elipticle Marquee Tool" we created a circle selection that will be used for the snooker ball,

The next step was to fill in the newly created selection with a colour of our choice, using the "Dodge Tool" we then created highlights on the top left part of the ball to create a source of light, we then used the "Burn Tool" to create an effect of shadow on the bottom right of the ball,

We then created a shadow for the ball by duplicating the layer and putting it underneath the original layer, at the moment it doesn't look like a shadow so we used a "Guassian Blur" with roughly 20 pixels. We then scaled the shadow by going into "Edit" "Transform" then "Perspective" and dragged the shadow outwards from the bottom to make it fit well with the snooker ball.

We then created three selections on top of each other using the "Elipticle Marquee Tool" then saved the selection. We then loaded the selection on the original layer and inversed it,

We then filled the selection with white then made the edge of the ball softer by duplicating the layer of the ball filled with white. We then added a layer mask and removed most of the white which left the edge looking softer.

We then created a new layer and with a lowered opacity of around 50% we used the "Brush Tool" with a white colour to create some small detail of light bouncing of the ball, we then created a new selection in the middle of the ball on a new layer using the "Marquee Tool"

Using the "Brush Tool" a black colour and a slightly large brush with soft edges we drew the above then lowered the opacity to act as shading,  

We then Created a new "Text" layer and added a number of our choice then adjusted the font etc,

This is the final outcome of the demo, although it was a long demo as we created the piece from scratch, it was easy to follow and the steps were clear, I have learnt many new techniques whilst following this demo that will help me greatly in the future, I am also happy with my outcome from the demo after I changed the colour of the snooker ball to black.