Brass Plaque Tutorial
 

 
In this tutorial, tools accessed in your Tool Palette are in red text. Effects found in the Menu Bar are followed by bracketed Keyboard Shortcuts denoted by blue text.



Step 1 Open a new 24 Bit, 600 X 400 image with a gray (#C0C0C0) background color.  



Step 2 Apply 20% uniform noise [Alt + T, N, A]



Step 3 Apply Motion Blur [Alt + T, B, M] with a direction of 270 or 90 degrees, and an intensity of 30-40 pixels.



Step 4 In the layer palette, right-click on the background and select Promote to Layer. Now apply an Inner Bevel 3D effect [Alt + T, 3, V] using settings that are to your liking. Normally, an engraved brass plaque like the one created here is fairly thin, so I'd suggest setting the Bevel Width to no more than 5 or 6. The settings I used are shown below. The color of the light is set to #C0C0C0.
Inner Bevel



Step 5 Colorize [Shift + L] the image with a Hue of 30 and a Saturation of 185.



Step 6 Apply the Lights Illumination Effect [Alt + T, I, L] to give the background an appearance of reflective metal. This effect is open to your creativity. The two images below show the settings I used for this tutorial. There are a total of five possible light sources. (I used two sources here.) Be sure unused lights are turned off by clicking on the buttons in the lower left corner of the Lights dialogue box and unchecking On under the Light Source.
Lights Effect
Lights Effect



Step 7 Now apply a Histogram Adjustment [Shift + Ctrl + H] in order to fine tune the reflective effect. Again, this adjustment is open to your creativity. The Histogram Adjustments I used here are shown in the image below.
Histogram Adjustment

 
At this point, the image has a slight "brushed metal" appearance. If you want to soften this effect, use the following steps:
 
Using the Selector tool with Antialias unchecked and Feathering set to 0, select the area inside of the bevel. Apply a Gaussian Blur [Alt + T, B, G] with a radius of 1 or 2. Deselect [Ctrl + D] the area. This procedure softens the surface of the plaque while maintaining a sharp edge on the bevel.
 
This completes the brass plaque.



Step 8 Now you can add your text. In the Text Entry Dialogue Box, create your text as Vector and Antialiased. Under Styles, set the stroke color to #4C4640 and the fill color to null. After you have applied your vector text to the image, select it with the Object Selector tool. Right-click inside the selection and go to Properties. Adjust the stroke width to 2. This setting may vary slightly depending on the size and style of your font. The font used here is Amphion.
 
In the layer palette, right-click on your vector layer and select Convert to Raster Layer.
 
With your text layer still active, apply an Inner Bevel 3D effect [Alt + T, 3, V] to the text using the settings shown in the image below. The color of the light is set to #EDD2A7.
Inner Bevel Settings



  You should now have an image that gives the appearance of engraved letters on brass.
Finished Image



Send an email with any questions or comments.
 
Raynbow Graphics