Create a Magic Eye in a Crystal Ball using Photoshop

Fantasy portraits come to life even more when you add a little sparkle of magic to them in Photoshop. In this tutorial video we look at how to create a magic eye in a crystal ball like you can see in the picture above. Our wizard is holding a glass ball and instead of just seeing his distorted reflection in it we want something to add a bit of interest. So, inspired by Sauron’s evil eye, I thought it would be interesting to create a kind of magic eye looking out from the crystal ball. This is  mainly done using glow effects that take just moments to create. Then we use the elliptical marquee tool to create an iris shape to fill with black. To give a sense of texture we add some lines emanating out from the pupil. A few dabs of colour around the edges help the illusion of the flaming eye come together. A little bit of blur here and there and some playing with the opacity levels helps to bring it all into a more cohesive whole. We then just have to mask off any bits that wouldn’t naturally be lit by a glow from the ball, such as the outer edge of his finger. This video takes you through all of the steps showing you how to create a magic eye of your own.