In this tutorial, we’re going to create a metallic effect using layer styles and gradients that you can apply to different objects. We’ll put it on a nice background and create a style for lettering that makes it look like it’s embedded into the metal. You can download the sample PSD file from the link at the bottom of the tutorial if you’d like to simply copy+paste the layer styles.
Step 1:
BACKGROUND LAYER
We start as always with a background gradient. I’ve used a Radial Gradient with two shades of a lovely light green. The exact color codes are:
Foreground color – #93cc1a
Background color – #7eb704
Step 2:
To give our background a bit more oomph we will next fade it off at the edges. So using a big soft brush and a foreground color of black, create a new layer and just go around the edges as shown.
Then switch the layer to opacity 30%.
Step 3:
Now duplicate that last layer of black edge and go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a setting of 20px to blur out the layer and give it a softer effect.
You may be wondering why we didn’t just use a different radial gradient in the first place, and indeed you probably could do that. I like to use this method on the edges as it’s more precise.
Step 4:
Now to get a bit of background effect, I grabbed a font called "TW Cen MT (T1)," which I think might be a default font, and just made two "S" letters. I used the color #cecfd0 and then made them gigantic and set the layers to Multiply. This created some nice curvy shapes in the background.
Step 5:
Now I need a shape to use my metallic effects on so using the Custom Shape Tool (U) I select this Fleur De Lis shape to use because it’s a reasonably complex and nice shape. Again, I used the color – #cecfd0 – because it’s a nice light grey to base our metallic effect on.
Step 6:
To start the metallic effect, right click on the layer and choose Blending Options.
First add a Drop Shadow to lift the shape off the background. The key to drop shadows is to NOT make them too full on. A good drop shadow should be subtle. I often don’t use black, but rather a variation of the background color–so in this case a dark green.
Next we add a Stroke. I’ve used an Inside stroke of 4px. But the key here is to switch Fill Type to Gradient and then use a nice gradient of grey and white.
The reason we do this is that if you look at metal in real life, you’ll see that it tends to go from light grey to darker grey to light grey and there are a lot of different shades. It isn’t one single flat color. Actually nothing in real life is a single flat color, but that’s another story.
So to get some realism, we need these gradients. But also you don’t want a full on gradient. Subtlety is the name of the game when it comes to gradients. Make soft changes. So here I’ve gone from white to that same light grey we used for the shape itself and back to white and back to grey and back to white.
Step 7:
Next to counter the stroke gradient, we add a Gradient Overlay using the same gradient. This appears on the main body of the shape and you can see how it contrasts really well with the stroke on the edge to make a metallic shine effect.
Step 8:
Finally to get a chromy effect, we’ll use the Bevel and Emboss Tool set to an Inner Bevel with a huge size and an odd Gloss Contour. I must admit I made this just by experimenting, so there’s no special reasoning behind it. Just move the sliders around until you get some nice reflections happening in the middle of the shape.
And now we have our metallic style! You can copy and paste the style by right clicking on the layer and selecting Copy Layer Style.
Step 9:
To finish off, I added a black band up the top and then drew a rounded rectangle over it with the usual grey, applied my metallic style by pasting the style on to that layer.
Then I added some text saying Metallic Style and created a new style for the text. With the new style I used a different bunch of settings as follows:
Inner Shadow – Because I want the letters to look like they are punched into the metal, I added an inner shadow. Make it nice and subtle though, not too full on!
Gradient Overlay – Because gradients make things look more natural, but again subtle color changes only!
Stroke – Again I use a gradient stroke, however this time it is an Outer Stroke and it is a gradient going from dark at the top to light at the bottom. The reason for this is that it makes it look like the letters have an edge where they were punched into the metal. And it looks like there is light coming from the top and landing on that edge so that one side is lit up and the other is in a bit of shadow. This gives it a much more metallic effect.
Step 10:
And there you have it: a nice pair of metallic styles!
Sample PSD
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Fantastically useful tutorial. Personally I don’t use photoshop, but I’ve found that the same effects work quite nicely in Illustrator. I look forward to seeing what the open submission does to the quality and variety of tutorials.
nice job, the psd file is not correct though.
it’s the glow effect, not the one that you describe!!
Hmm, I think the PSD attached to this tutorial is wrong.
Espectacular!
definetly like the explanation of the styles and why you used them.
This is beautiful, and a great tutorial. Thanks!
Brilliant, I’m a new member here, and sheesh! These tutorials are amazingly helpful. I appreciate them so much!
Alex.
Thanks so much! i like it
I guess it would have been too hard to slide that palette out of the frame that’s just sitting nearly out of the frame to the right in half your screen-caps eh?
Otherwise a nice tutorial though.
hehe yes indeed :-) Must have got a bit lazy there!
Awesome!
Just testing threaded comments
lol :D
Excellent work. This is a very easy to follow tutorial and I got some amazing results. I especially like the punched letters.
Great Job!
WOW! One of the best tutorial I’ve read. This is exactly what I needed to do. Thank you so much!
Question Collise,where did you download the customs shapes?
Thanks a lot Collis! i like this website and your tutorials! i am 12 years old and i understand every single step.
This is beautiful, and a great tutorial.
Wow this tutorial is from soo long ago :-)
Nice work
good!!thanks!!
haha;;
cool..web 2.0 design.. awesome!..
thx man
I liked the way you explained some things in this tutorial.
Thanks a lot for this amazing tutorial. Especially your explainations, keep up the good work, I for one appreciate it!
hello budy
what r u doing?
Useful tutorial, I’ve been a follower of your work for long. I’ve been using PS for website layouts, this is the first tutorial I’ve tried replicating.
And once I completed it in PS, I also spotted quite a few ‘Collis effects’ :) like 1 px lines, subtle gradients and lots of radial gradients. You’ve really created a trend in that regard (forgive me if someone else started it, I’ve been into graphics only recently), I see lots of PS sites now have layouts using these effects, and also a few tuts.
nice tutorial……
very nice work….
nice job……..really…
very interesting work…..
Very nice tutorial.
fast AND effective. I’ll make a mac os X dock with this!!!! THANKS!
Thanks for making the tutorial very easy to follow :-)
thank you very fantastic!!!!!!!!!
its really great
Very important to me. Tks.
Thank you sharing this information.
this tutorial was helpful and easy
Nice effect, i tried it too, :) … thanks for sharing it…
check mine here…
http://whizzgraphics.blogspot.com/2011/03/metal-text-effect.html
‘I can’t find my blog on the Web, where is it?’
nice tutorial! :)
Great, very esasy to do and well explained tutorial. Thanks
Great info and easy to use. Thanks for the share….)
thanks for this tuts
its really easy to try and i sucsess to create 1 metalic shape :)
awsome…
Fantastic blog – I am blown away on how easy it was to create this!! Keep them coming :)