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Nice Brushed Metal Effect

Posted 1 year, 6 months ago by Graffi | | 226 views | Technorati

Here’s a quick way to create a brushed metal look. I’m using sort of a bronze color, but it can be used on a grey color (use a darker grey for iron and lighter grey for platinum or aluminum), gold, rust, etc.

First, create a selection. I’m starting with a new document, but it can be used on an existing document, too.

Fill the selection with the base metal color of your choice. If you’re working on an existing image, duplicate the selection to its own layer (you can use Handy Actions to put a selection on its own layer).

Create a new layer, and name it “Noise”. With the selection still active (if you put your selection on its own layer, <Ctrl>/<Cmd>+Click that layer’s thumbnail to select it), fill it with white. Now click Filters>Noise>Add Noise and click on the options Gaussian and Monochromatic. Adjust the slider to get a goodly amount of noise in your selection.

Now, with the noise layer active with the selection active, click Filters>Blur>Motion Blur and adjust the angle to a diagonal that looks good, and adjust the slider to the point that the noise is almost invisible.

Change the Noise layer’s blend mode to Lighten, and adjust the opacity if necessary (you might want to also try Multiply blend mode if you’re working with a lighter colored metal).

My final result is below; I used the “Trim Canvas” action in Handy Actions 3 to cut it down and remove the extra canvas:

It works pretty well on text, too.

For this, I used the Handy Actions pack again, choosing the “Stroke Selection New Layer” action. I made a selection of my text and used the options 4 px, black when the Stroke dialog opened. This placed a 4px stroke, in black, at the top of my layer stack.

Then I ran the same action again, only this time choosing 1px, White. This put a 1px White stroke at the top of my layer stack, resulting in the image below: