BEATEN METAL TEXT

A very simple but effective dual-purpose (shiny or beaten) metallic text effect using Harry's Star Gradients, Hot Wax and Emboss filters.

Open a new image.  I have worked on a 400*400 square with a white background.

Make a text entry, using a bold-style font.  48pt Hobo was used here.  To fatten up the text without having to deselect it, expand it by two pixels (selection/modify/expand/2) then flood fill with (any) colour.

Apply Harry's Star Gradients -- I have used the default settings.  It doesn't matter that these gradients are black and white -- colorizing is done later; you are using the filter to get the gradient sheen that makes this method work.

You can use several other methods to achieve this stage of the effect, but as usual working with a filter makes the process painless.

Step 4

With the text still selected, apply two coats of white (foreground colour) Hot Wax; apply the Emboss filter and apply another coat of Hot Wax.

This will give you a half-way decent "black chrome" look!  (I lost the graphic that went here *G*)  At this point, you can play with your colorize, brightness & contrast and gamma correction controls to get any number of shiny metallic effects -- small sample below.

Step 5

Depending how "beaten" you want your text to look, repeat the above steps as many times as you like.  In other words, with your text still selected, hot wax  again once, follow with an emboss, hot wax again. When you're satisfied that the text has the texture you want, you can colorize it either by in two different ways.  (This colorizing part is all a matter of taste.)

1) Simply use "colorize", choosing a number in the 30-35 range and adjusting the saturation to your own taste.  Fine tune with gamma correction and brightness/contrast

2) The method I used was to make the final coat using coloured hot wax.  When I had what I wanted, I unded the previous black and white hot wax step and reapply the hot wax using an orange/brown as my foreground colour.   Again, fine tuning done with brightness/contrast etc.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

Try applying another Emboss AFTER you have colorized your text.  Here are two interesting results I came up with that way -- a nice "old iron" effect and a mother-of-pearl finish.

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