Metal Rod

Realistic metal is a very hard look to achieve in Photoshop (at least it always was for me), but here’s a quick way to make good looking, metal bars, rods, and shiney pipes.

Let’s start with a new document, size doesn’t really matter, but I’m using 500x200px. We want a white background, so we can easily see what we’re doing. You can always change it later.

Turn on the grid, so that you can make soem easy measurements.

Make a new layer and them create a rectangular selection that is the length of your pipe, and four times the width that you want to end up with.

Now select the silver gradient from the gradient list and fill the selection from top to bottom.

Now deselect the shape, and select the lower half of the gradient only. Go to Image – Adjust – Brightness/Contrast, set the brightness to -30 and the contrast to -15.

Keeping the selection active, go to Edit – Transform – Scale, and drag the bottom of the bounding-box up until it’s half its original height.

Release the selection and go to Edit – Transform – Scale again. This time drag the bounding-box up until it’s approximately 1/3 of its original height. This will finish off your bar.

I hope you enjoyed this little quickie tutorial and that you’re able to put it to good use somewhere.

Added Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 9:10 pm under Interface Elements.