Glass Ball tutorial always fails

Hi everyone: It's been driving me nuts for months now because all the glass ball tutorials (glass tutorials in general too) I've found on the internet don't work. I think it may be because my PS is an older version (5.5) and the tutorials I've seen out there are for later versions.

The effect is that I end up with a "plastic" ball, rather than a glass one.

Anyone have any idea how to make a good glass ball with PS 5.5? I want to make more than just glass balls, but I have to start somewhere.

Thanks.

I think what you get really depends on what you start off with. This tutorial is quite effective, but only if you have a background to generate it from... an environment for the ball to reflect.
This effect is fairly good if you want to create something from scratch... although bear in mind what background you will end up with and use the same background colour so that as you create it you can balance the colours, alpha layers, etc and create something convincing.

Thanks, Sirkent! That one with the hand was awesome. I'll try those, though I've not worked really with alpha layers, etc.