Messing around with the 3D tool in Photoshop CS4

I’ve been using Photoshop for almost four years now, but there are some tools I have never bothered to try out. The 3D tool is one of them. It’s only available in the extended versions. I have to admit, I was intimidated by the controls for the 3D tool for the longest time. It has a steep learning curve, but like with almost everything else in Photoshop, the more you mess around with it, the more you will become familiar with it. Last weekend I created some colorful globes using the 3D tool and placed them onto a photograph I took of a pond in Maine. I added a shadow underneath each sphere to make it more realistic.

Here is the result: