Preserved Topic: Learning Lightning Effects (part II)

Hello. Welcome to Learning Lightning Effects part II

Thanks to DL-44's tutorial and the others who tried to help me, I was able to learn to lightning effects some. I'm trying to achieve some metal-like looking interface. Here's an example : http://www.ocal.net/temp/lightning.jpg . This example is kinda my goal. And here's what I've done today : http://www.ocal.net/temp/lightning2.jpg .

I would like ask for your help about this. How can I make mine sleek and metallic, like the one in the example? I asked to the author of that skin but haven't any reply yet. I toyed with settings of the lightning effects but couldn't find my way. Can you give me any directions or suggestions on what I should do? This one is important to me, I really want to learn this. Any help would be much appreciated.

to get a metallic effect you could try playing with the curves for the image... that can give you a cool chrome effect, a lot of tutorials seem to basically consist of that statment with various levels of gaussian blur, channels and lighting thrown in for good measure.
i'll leave more advanced suggestions to the people who can actually use Photoshop.
Remember try http://www.gurusnetwork.com for some cool tutorials or
http://www.wastedyouth.org and check out the archieved tutoriasl. more than enough to keep
you occupied there

: : Relain : :

Definitely curves... I had some images sometimes back to demonstrate it... after you've applied the lightING effects to your gray layer, open up the curves box and add a couple points to the line. Move the first point up and the second point low, so that your curves line looks like a hill and then a valley and then a rise... sort of --> /\/ <-- like that. that alone should be enough to give you a glossy metallic effect... you can play with this by adding more points or adjusting the curve however you like. Curves is how I got the blood in my sig so shiny...



[This message has been edited by Human Shield (edited 08-20-2001).]

thanks!

if you have any further suggestions, I would love to hear them..

Yes, curves are your friend

In that tutorial I included a link to Steve's Curves Tutorial: http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorials/photoshop/curves1.html
which is alos at the Gurus Network - it is one of the best there is.

Good metal will also require some hand brushing from time to time, and of course some real-life observation (grab whatever shiny metal objects you can find and leave them around your computer so you begin to get a feel for exactly how they react with lihgt...)

Not my best example, but I did this in a hurry before heading to work...

+ =

[This message has been edited by Human Shield (edited 08-22-2001).]

thanks alot for the help all.