Decorate your Tree with Baubles!
First you need a photo. I got this one from the Stock Exchange.
Drag it onto your canvas and adjust it so that the face (or whatever you want to appear on your ball) is directly on top of the bauble. You can usually do this by eye, but remember you can always turn the opacity down a little if you need to see through the picture to get it aligned just right.
With your Selection Tool in hand, hold down Ctrl and click on the layer containing the bauble. This will select that layer. However, make sure that the layer you are actually working on is the one containing the picture (in this case the boy).
Select Filter < Distort < Spherize.
Click OK.
You can see that you’ve now mapped that portion of the image onto a sphere. If you want it exaggerated a little more, you can always apply the spherize filter again.
Now we have to get rid of the surrounding. Select < Inverse the selection.
Hit delete.
Almost there! Right click the selection and select Feather … .
Make the radius somewhere around 40 pixels.
Hit delete again.
Now it’s merely a matter of adjustment. Change the layer to Overlay to let the green show through.
You might also want to bring the opacity down a tad as well.
Ta-da! Your Christmas bauble is complete!
Remember, experiment! You don’t have to make your decorations exactly the same as mine. If you try out this tutorial, do let me know! I’d love to see what you come up with, and if you give me permission, perhaps you’ll see your stuff on this site as well.
Merry Christmas everyone!
