Make this glassy cartoonesque globe following the easy steps of this tutorial.

NOTE: the white around the circle in the example pictures is transparent in Photoshop!

Step 1:
Open a new Document (400x400 px or so) and select the biggest perfect circle that fits the document.
Set the foreground color to a shade of green and the background color to a shade of blue.
Now go to Filter->Render->Clouds.


Step 2:
Apply Filter->Sketch->Torn Edges and play around a little with the Image Balance.
Stop when you get a nice balance between the green and blue.


Step 3:
Now go to Filter->Distort->Spherize and set the amount to 100%.
Press CTRL+F to finish the globe effect.


Step 4:
Now we're gonna make some clouds!
Press CTRL+SHIFT+N to make a new layer, then press D to reset the colors to black&white.
Now do Filter->Render->Clouds.
Repeat Step 3, after that set the blending mode of the clouds layer to SCREEN. Now go to step 5 (to avoid ppl repeating step 3 and 4 over and over :P)


Step 5:
The basic globe is done now.
All what's left to do is the glass effect!
Press CTRL+E to merge the clouds layer with the globe layer and then press CTRL+SHIFT+N for a new layer.
Select an elipse, about half the size of the globe on the top half of the picture.
Then press X to make white your foreground and black your background colors.
draw a vertical gradient (white to black) in top->bottom way..
Set the reflection layer blend mode to SCREEN
DONE!:


With some adittional effects you can achieve some amazing results!


And ofcourse, a siggie:



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