I think I just got lucky with this. I was following a photoshop tutorial for making a crystal ball and was getting stuck on quite a few of the instructions. There didn't seem to be any way to replicate some of what was being said with Gimp so I just started messing around and came up with the above image. I used the Render/Nature/Flame filter for the smoky effect inside the ball and also the Apply Lens filter to give a curved shape to it.
I'm using this image over at my DeviantArt profile. It's for a link to Dark News magazine where I am now - without the slightest idea what I'm doing - the official astrologer.

looks like a real photo of a marble!

caz: a good looking composition! i think the ball needs some highlights to the left to give it some volume, though.

Could looking ball, like the pattern created with the flame filter.

Thanks. I was pleased with the way it turned out.


I guess you mean on the left hand side where the edge of the ball is lost in the dark? I didn't want to crowd out the inside of the ball with too much detail, but yeah it could do with some more definition at that point. Thanks for the tip.


Thanks. I never used to use the fame filter much on my old machine as it took too long to run on large images. It works much better now that I've got a faster machine.

I like it Caz. Nice font too.

Thanks, Erisian.
The font's called 'New Gothic Style.' I got it from dafont. It's so good that these people just give this stuff away.

I like it. Which filter did you use for the lightning effect? I got stuck when following the photoshop tutorial and couldn't figure out a way to make the lightning with Gimp, so I went for flames instead.

Thank you, conbagui, that works great.
Actually I ran through the instructions about four times before I realised how important the brush size is. It would appear that anything less than about 100 pixels and the effect won't work.

Both of those are very cool! Do you have a link to the tutorial? I might like to try that one day.

Thanks, I want to try this when I get done with my current project!