Photoshop Magnifying Glass Tutorial
March 2, 2006 by Oli · 26 Comments ![]()
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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 :

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.

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 :

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

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

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

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 :

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 :

Now give it a stroke of 6 pixels :

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

Your image should now be looking like this :

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

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

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

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

You can also download the psd
If you liked this Dig it!
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Nice tutorial man.
Cheers!
This is a nice tutorial. Clear and simple.
Keep on the good work
Awesome!
great stuff
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
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.
Nice site and some really good tutorials.
Bookmarked!
Cheers and keep up the good work,
Erwin.
This tutorial is so nice!!
Nice tutorial man
All the Best
Thanks for the tutorial. I think the magnified area needs to be a bit convex some how
Dude… “dig”?
Useful and nice tutorial! I hope you don’t mind translating for photoshop-bg.com.Thanks!
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
its verygood
Nice tutorial man.
Thanks, nice tutorial!
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.
[…] Magnifying Glass Tutorial This is a nice easy method to create the illusion of a magnifying glass which you can lay over any background you like. […]
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