Textured Metal

Here is a little basic tutorial that you will find many uses for besides just metal.

1. Start out with a new image, we started at 374x99 (weird size, just worked out that way). Then Fill a new layer with a neutral gray name the layer 'Metal', also fill the background layer with the same color. (128,128,128)

   

2. On the 'Metal' layer, Select Filter/Noise/Add Noise. Use a fairly high setting, we used 70 and make sure that you use monochromatic as we don't want to introduce any color to the image.

   

3. Now we need to use the Filter/Blur/Motion Blur Filter. This is what give your metal its color variations. We used a setting of 45º and 130 Pixels.

   

4. Now, we'll put some texture to the metal. First we need to make a selection. Choose Select/Color Range and you will get a window like the one below. Set the drop down to sampled color and select somewhere in the image. Adjust the slider til you get something like the image below.

   

5. Our next step is to save the selection. Do this by choosing Select/Save Selection. You will see a screen similar to the one below. Save the selection to a new channel and name it whatever you want.

   

6. The Final step is to add the texture. We will use the Filter/Lighting Effects filter. Here is where it really comes together. The settings that we used were; (but try changing them to see the different effects that you can get.

   Light Type - Spotlight
   Intensity - 35
   Focus - 69
   Gloss - 94
   Material - 100
   Exposure - 0
   Ambiance - 8
   Texture Channel - Channel you saved
   White is high - yes
   Height - 13
   

7. The last thing we did was to add the text. To do this, we simply added a text layer and using the layer effects added a reverse emboss. We then duplicated the metal later and put it on top of the text. We then adjusted the opacity of all three layers till we got the effect we wanted.