The Shadow
We're gonna start with cutting out the image and copying the shadow. When you use a stock-image, like mine, which has a white background and a shadow on it, just ignore the shadow while cutting out the object and come back to that later.
When you've removed the background, all you need to do is take a close look at the original image with the shadow and reproduce that. If you have an image with no shadow in it, it will be a little harder since you will have to improvise. But most of the time, a simple shadow underneath the object will do.
As for our image, we're going to use a nice helmet from sxc.hu.
As you can see, I've removed the background from the stock-image. You can use any desired tool for it such as the Polygonal Lasso-Tool, Pen-Tool or even the stanard Lasso-Tool.
Make sure that right now you have 2 layers. The background, which can be ANY color, and the helmet. You can also have 3 layers, which would be an addition of the hidden stock-layer. (I always keep my stocks in the original document. Also, when I'm going to add a lot of effects to a certain valuable object, I also make a copy of it and hide it. That way, it doesn't bother you and you can always go back if Ctrl+Z doesn't work.)
Now create a layer underneath the helmet and grab the Pen-Tool and draw a shape underneath the helmet like below and fill it with black.
Press Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer, or do it manually. After that, grab the duplicate and hide the other. Press Ctrl+T and make the duplicate a little smaller. About half the size of the original.
Now go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set it to 4-7. Also lower the opacity slightly to about 50-70.
Nw hide this layer and unhide the original shadow-layer and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set it to 7-9 and lower the opacity to 60-80.
Then unhide both layers and look at what you got. If the shadow is still too dark for your taste, fiddle around with the opacity. If the shadow is still too light, that may happen on dark backgrounds, also change the opacity.
Silver-Plated
Now, to make this helmet shine, we need to duplicate the helmet-layer by pressing Ctrl+J. Now press Ctrl+G or Ctrl+SHIFT+G to mask the duplicated layer with the original helmet.
Now, go to Filter>Sketch>Chrome and set the Detail to 10 and the Smoothness to 0.
Now duplicate this layer and set it to Lighten. Also keep making sure that all the duplicates are also masked. If they aren't press Ctrl+G or Ctrl+Shift+G again! Then, lower the opacity to 10-20 or even below that.
Now, create a new layer on top and fill this with either Black or White and set the blending-mode to Color. Make sure you mask it again!
If you do not mask it, it will turn all the layers underneath it into grey images.
Now grab your Chromed layer and duplicate it by pressing Ctrl+J and drag this layer to the top of the stack above the Black or White layer.
Also mask this layer again. Now go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set it to 10-20.
Now lower the opacity to 20 and set the blending-mode to Linear dodge.
Now grab your Elliptical Marquee-Tool to drag a circle across the helmet. Press Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection and grab your Gradient-Tool and set it from White to Transparent.
Drag a very soft Gradient across it. You can also do it much easier! Create a new layer and fill it with white. Now grab your Elliptical Marquee-Tool and cut off a part of the white that covers the helmet. About 50% of it. Now grab your 300px fuzzy Eraser and gently erase parts of the white and lower the opacity.
Now you also have your shiney reflection!
Use one of those techniques again to seperate the cap from the helmet itself a little more.
Grab your Pen-Tool and draw a thin line at the bottom of the helmet and make sure it goes from the bottom left corner to the middle right corner.
Convert this into a selection and fill it with black, then lower the opacity to 30-40.
With the same fuzzy 300px Brush, on a new layer, click one time on the screen to create a blurred brush-stain. Now grab a much smaller fuzzy Eraser-brush to brush away parts of the right bottom.
Now use the Move-Tool to drag this shape to the top left corner of the helmet.
Lens-Flares?
Now you can either skip this part if you hate Lens Flares, but I wanted to add this to make it even more retro. And I will show you how Lens Flares CAN be cool. But we're gonna have to make it in order to make it cool!
Grab your Elliptical Marquee-Tool and while holding SHIFT, drag it across the screen to create a perfect selection. On a new layer fil this with a desired color, since we're gonna make it transparent anyhow.
Lower the Fill to 0%, NOT the Opacity. And go to the layer-styles and ad a soft inner White glow. Now create a new layer above it and select both layers to merge them. That should take care of the layer-style and "baking" it inside the new layer. Copy this layer 2 times and position it near the shine and make the two duplicates smaller. Make sure it looks like mine below.
Now you got yourself a nice Lens Flare. And since you made it, you can tweek it to edit how it looks!
Since I wanted to make the helmet a little more personal, I wanted to add the first initial of his name to the helmet. I did that by grabbing the Text-Tool and just typing a W.
Then right-clicking the layer and selecting Rasterise Layer, to rasterise the text, allowing me to perform Edit>Transform>Distort and place it in the right position. After I did that, I traced it with the Pen-Tool, because it looked much sharper. (That last step is optional)
When you have that, select the text by holding Ctrl and clicking on the thumbnail of the layer. Then on a new layer, drag a gradient with the light and the dark colors of the helmet inside the selection. To get those colors, just grab your EyeDropper and click on a very light area on the helmet. Then press X to swap the colors and click on a dark part of the helmet.
When you have that, I selected the Move-Tool and pressed this pattern while holding Alt: Ledt, Down, Left, (Down).
Merge all those layers together apart from the last duplicate. Press Ctrl+U on those merged layers and drag the bottom slider a little to the left. Now your Initial looks 3d!
Now Merge the text-layers together and duplicate this layer by pressing Ctrl+J. Grab the original and press Ctrl+U and drag the bottom slider all the way to the left. After pressing OK, drag the layer a little to the right and bottom.
Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur and set the blurr to 3-7. Then lower the opacity to 30-50.
Conclusion
And there you have it. Your own personal Silver-Plated helmet. Below you can see the Photomanupulations I made out of it.
I sadly cannot show you how that is done, but by looking at it, I'm sure most of you would be able to make it. When making the album I looked a lot at the old Daft Punk and Jamiroquai-albums for inspiration.
I'm pretty pleased with the result and with this technique, you can really turn anything into shiney silver! Combine this with my Album Cover-Tutorial and you might be able to make something cooler then below!
If you have fancy objects other then helmets that you've turned into Silver with this tutorial, post the link in the comments below so I can take a look!
