Hey Mo!
You are a step ahead of me lol! I wanted to get at posting the tutorial today or tomarrow... but I'm too slow!
Anyhoo....
as Mo said, I use SBC+ and there is a terrific webinar tutorial that explains how to make the globe WAAAAYYYYY better than I ever could!
you can find it at pixels2pages.net
HERE!!
For those without GIMP or SBC+
I did play with it using photoimpact and was able to duplicate it using the same basic steps.
The short and dirty way to try it is:
1. Make 7 square photo frames across and down in a grid.
2. Add photos (best ones in middle, outer ones are very squished!) and mat,
if desired
3. Group and flatten entire grid.
4. Then use a filter to 'spherize' and trim off any excess. Voila! In my program,the filter is called 'spherize' but depending on your program, you may have to hunt a little.
5. Add a matching circle behind your globe to 'colorize' the empty spaces
between the pictures
to make the reflection:
1. copy and paste your globe
2. flip the new copy vertically
3. use your programs blending tool to make the copy vanish as it gets farther
away from the original
4. use the opacity tool/filter to make the reflected globe lighter
and thats it!
Rather than make a grid initially, I played around just using paper til I got the sphere to work. When I tried modifying the steps to try it in my photoimpact program... it was much simpler to cut my paper or grid into a circle first before spherizing it....since unlike SBC+, photoimpact didn't give the option to just delete the excess. It was a bit of a pain to get rid of it manually.
Hope that you give it a try!
If you figure out any tips to doing this with other programs... please add it to the thread!!