In this tutorial, I will teach you how to create the effect above. 

Step1: Setting up workspace.
Create your work area, 800x600 and using the "Ellipse Tool"

Draw the circle shown below. Hold Shift while drawing to get a perfect circle. Change the foreground color to #083d5c. Now draw the shape shown below.

Select the "Ellipse Tool" and draw another circle as shown below. Change the foreground color to #239de3. Name this layer "Small Orb"

Duplicate (Ctrl+J) the "Small Orb"layer, so you will have two layers. As shown below.

After duplicating the layers, you should have two of the same layer. Select the "Small Orb" layer at the bottom and click, Filter Blur Gaussian Blur set the Radius to 8.3 pixels and click ok.

Now Right click on the "Small Orb" copy layer and select Blending Options, with that add the setting for the Inner Shadow and click ok when you are finished.

Inner Shadow

Hold Shift the click and select the two Small Orb layers as shown below.

With the layers selected press Ctrl+E to merge the layers. Again right click on the merged layers and select Blending Options and add the setting below.

Inner Shadow

Click ok, and you will have the effect shown below.

Step2: Creating the reflection effects.
Click on the "Ellipse Tool"

and draw the two ellipse shown on different layers using white as the color.

After getting the ellipse into position, Merge the layers and duplicate it. You can name the duplicated layers Reflection1 and Reflection2 with Reflection2 on top of Reflection1 this will make it easer for me to explain. Same as before click on the Reflection1 we need to blur it. click, Filter Blur Gaussian Blur set the Radius to 8.3. With this effect you will get a little glow around the ellipse as shown below.

Right click on Reflection2 select blending options and add the setting shown below.

Outer Glow

Create a new layer, using the "Ellipse Tool" set the foreground color to white and draw the circle shown below. Since my background is white and the circle is white i hid the background to show you the size of the circle.

In the layer Pallet you will see the Opacity setting, change this to 21% and position the circle as shown in the image below.

Press Ctrl+J to duplicate this layer and position this circle as shown in the image below.

Hold Shift and select both layers and Merge (Ctrl+E) them. Click on the Eraser Tool select the soft brush with the diameter set to 170 pixels and the settings shown.

Start erasing the two reflection to get the effect below. Using the brush erase most of the reflections, as you can see the upper part of the reflection is mostly gone leaving the outline at the bottom. Pass the brush over the outline couple time to make it dimmer or lighter.

Step3: Creating the design inside the orb.
Click here and you can download one of the custom shapes, When you find something you like import it into photoshop and using the custom shape tool place the shape in the middle of the orb. Duplicate this shape and blur the bottom layer, Gaussian Blur set the Radius to 8.3. This will give you the glowing effect shown below.

We need to create the effect of the Image curving this the orb, using the Eraser Tool select the soft brush with the diameter set to 170 pixels and the settings shown.

Start erasing the top and the bottom of the image, until you get the effect below.

Finished: Hope it was what you expected, any questions feel free to ask through email or the forums.

This Tutorial was Created By Mark
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