Photoshop - advanced textures (3) 15. Time to inflict some MORE damage. We chipped it, we scarred it, we scratched it...now let's dent it. Dents and deeper marrings to the Blade surface go along with the whole rusting, old, used weapon idea. So in much the same way as we scratched the blade, we'll mar it deeper. Create a New Layer above the Scratches Layer, call it Dents and then Select the Paintbrush Tool, and do one of the three following things: A) Select and/or load a speckled/spatter brush. Set the foreground colour to a dark grey. Spray a few random places (random and even distribution: the buzzwords of this tutorial) with your brush causing dark specks along the Blade and the Blade Side. Once you're happy with the distribution of what will be "dents", Do the following:
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16. Making sure you're on the Dents Layer, click on the Layer Effects icon  at the bottom of the Layers palette. Disable the drop shadow (it's automatically enabled at first) and go to Bevel and Emboss in the effects menu. Select Outer Bevel, with settings of Color Dodge for the highlights, and Multiply for the shadows, 1 pixel for depth, and 0 pixels for the blur ("soften"). This will give your dents a look of "depth" into the metal blade. |
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| 17. Nearly there now, but our axe still looks a bit dull, a bit flat.
Remember that Gradient Layer we made way back in the beginning? Select the Gradient Layer now, and go to IMAGE...Adjustments...Brightness and Contrast. Increasing the contrast of the Gradient Layer will cause it to start looking more metallic, while bringing out the highlights and shadows. Increasing the brightness will make the axe seem more glaring and reflective, while decreasing it will bring up the shadows and darken the reflecting light. For the example, we increased the brightness by 9 while also increasing the contrast by about 30. It gave the blade a more rounded and more metallic look. |
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| 18. All we need to do now is go back to the very original (bottom) layer, fill it with a medium grey, go one up to our original "Shape" layer, click the Layer Effects icon and add a touch of drop shadow. There are different ways of creating the "sparkle" - I prefer choosing the Brush Tool and going to the options palette. Click on the arrow in the top right of the brushes box and choose Assorted Brushes. Pick Starburst - Large (49) and with White as your Foreground Color "dab" on the image a few times until you're happy with the result. |
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