Start by opening a file about one and a half to two times the desireddiameter of your sphere, with 16 million colors. Remember, it's usuallybest to make your graphic large and size down later. Here I've startedwith a window of about 250 x 250 pixels. Decide what color you want yoursphere to be and then Flood Fill the window with a very dark shade of thatcolor. Now, using the Shape Selection tool set to circle and with Antialiaschecked, draw a large circle in the center of your window. Flood Fill thecircle with the desired lighter shade of color. Here I've chosen basicblue.
 
 
 

To add the shadowing, first expand your selection by 1 pixel (Selections,Modify: Expand). Now add a Wind Deformation (Image, Deformations:Wind).Set the direction from the Left, and the Strength to 17 or 18. Dependingon the size of your sphere, you may need to adjust up or down to get shadingthat you like. At this point, it's a good idea to save our current circularselection to the alpha channel for later use (Selections: Save to AlphaChannel. When the new menu pops up, click OK, and do the same on the nextpopup box). Be sure not to deselect your selection quite yet.
 
 

We have the shadowing on the left side, now we define the shading onthe rest of the sphere. Go to Image, Blur: Gaussian Blur. Set the Radiusto about 6. This will darken the edges.
 
 
 
 

Next we apply the highlight. Deselect your sphere (Selections: None)and create a new layer (Layers: New). Change your foreground color to whiteor a very light shade of your color. Now use the shapes tool to draw asmall ellipse in the upper left hand of your sphere. (Set the Shape toEllipse, the Style to Filled, the Outline Width to 1 pixel, and uncheckAntialias)
 
 
 
 

Use the Magic Wand to select your ellipse. Now we can use the Interactivedeformation tool to rotate the shape. Click on the Interactive Deformationbutton  and place the cursor over the "handle" extending from the center of thebox surrounding your selection. A little curved arrow should appear. Movethe mouse until the deformation box is at about a 45 degree angle. ClickApply. Then deselect.
 
 
 
 

The highlight is just a bit too sharp. We can fix that by blurring itin a two step process. First, we apply a Motion Blur (Image, Blur: MotionBlur). Set the Direction to about 45 degrees and the Intensity to about10 pixels.
 
 
 
 

Finally, Apply a Gaussian Blur (Image, Blur: Gaussian Blur) with a Radiusof about 2.00
 
 
 
 

To free your sphere from the dark background, simply recall the selectionyou saved to the Alpha channel (Selections: Load from Alpha Channel - you'llsee the Marquis reappear), Copy (Edit: Copy Merged), and Paste as a NewImage (Edit, Paste: As New Image).
 
 
 
 

You can color the transparent areas to match the background shade ofyour webpage, resize, and save as a transparent GIF file.
 
 
 

If you wish to create a sphere with texture, the procedure is very similarbut requires the use of layers. Open a new file with a black background.Duplicate the layer, and on the second layer create a white sphere. Besure not to deselect your circle when you're done.
 
 

Go to the Layers Menu or Palette and select your Background layer. Itmay help at this point to view only this layer so that you can see whatyou're doing (Layers, View: Current Only). Open your desired texture filein PSP and set the Flood fill tool to a Fill Style of Pattern. Press theOptions Button on the Controls Palette and select the name of your texturefile in the New Pattern Source pulldown menu. Fill the circle with yourdesired pattern. here I've used a marbled blue pattern that I created inPSP (see my Marbled Swirl Patterns tutorial).
 
 
 

Select the second layer again in the Layers Menu. Now click Properties.Change the Blend Mode to Multiply. You should see the shadows overlayedon your texture.
 
 
 
 

Adding the shadows tends to darken the texture quite a bit. To lightenit, first we merge the Layers (Layers: Merge), then we lighten it a bit(Colors, Adjust: Hue/Saturation/Lightness) Increase the lightness by about5, and increase the saturation to 100.
 
 
 
 

To complete the sphere, first copy it (Edit: Copy Merged), paste itas a new image (Edit: Paste as New), and add the highlight as above.