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Photoshop Magnifying Glass Tutorial

March 2, 2006 by Oli · 26 Comments [Post to Twitter][Post to Yahoo Buzz][Post to Digg][Post to Reddit][Post to StumbleUpon]




This is a nice easy method to create the illusion of a magnifying glass which you can lay over any background you like.

The finished design will look like this :

Magnifying glass

To start off we need a picture of a magnifying glass - first port of call is sxc.hu. A great free stock photo site.
You can also grab the magnifying glass photo from tutorialblog.

Cut out the image and resize it to suit your image, the tutorial image will be created at 400px square.

Magnifying glass

Next, get your background image and resize it down - we will be using a larger version for the magnified part so its important to resize it down :

Magnifying glass

Now create a new layer and past a larger version of your background image on to it :

Magnifying glass

Using the circular selection tool, draw a circle the rough shape of the magnifying glass lense :

Magnifying glass

Now, go to select > transform selection, this will put handles to resize your circular selection :

Magnifying glass

Resize the selection and get it as close to the edges of the magnifying glass rim as you can.
Hit enter > make sure the large background image is selected, then select > inverse selection > press delete.

You should now have something like this :

Magnifying glass

With that layer still selected, right click on it in the layer window and select blending options.
Give it an inner shadow with these settings :

Magnifying glass

Now give it a stroke of 6 pixels :

Magnifying glass

Select the magnifying glass layer and give it a drop shadow to make it look more realistic :

Magnifying glass

Your image should now be looking like this :

Magnifying glass

Next we will add a slight reflection, create a new layer, draw a circle like this and fill it white :

Magnifying glass

Select the layer below, select > inverse and press delete, you should now have :

Magnifying glass

Select the white reflection layer and right click to go into blending options, change the settings to overlay :

Magnifying glass

Once this is done, you should now have this as your finished image :

Magnifying glass

You can also download the psd

If you liked this Dig it!

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Comments

26 Responses to “Photoshop Magnifying Glass Tutorial”
  1. EntityX says:

    Nice tutorial man. :)

  2. happyfish says:

    This is a nice tutorial. Clear and simple.

    Keep on the good work

  3. Mike says:

    great stuff

  4. Nikzad says:

    Beautiful stuff… You guys are making it look so simple something which i thought was so difficult to achieve… Thanks and do keep up the amazing work… All the Best :)

  5. You can take it a step further by adding a slight spherize effect to the “magnified” layer to give it that little bit of distortion caused by the lens.

  6. Erwin Heiser says:

    Nice site and some really good tutorials.
    Bookmarked!
    Cheers and keep up the good work,
    Erwin.

  7. Sumi says:

    This tutorial is so nice!!

  8. nagaraju says:

    Nice tutorial man

    All the Best

  9. Andrew says:

    Thanks for the tutorial. I think the magnified area needs to be a bit convex some how

  10. Angel says:

    Dude… “dig”?

  11. tita says:

    Useful and nice tutorial! I hope you don’t mind translating for photoshop-bg.com.Thanks!

  12. Andre From Indonesia says:

    simple trick bro..
    I like it, god bless you
    I hope you make some tricks better than this.
    if you find difficult call me bro..
    081808368736

  13. fady says:

    its verygood

  14. Karim says:

    Nice tutorial man. :)

  15. Black Tiger says:

    Thanks, nice tutorial!

  16. Kieren says:

    MAGNIFicent tutorial, absolutely amazing effects, helped me greatly as i am currently doing coursework and it has really added that little effect to my mood board, thanks.

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