The Photoshop Guru's Handbook - The Guru Studio: Session 5

*Session 5*	The Chrome Files This month's Episode: “The Metal Chameleon”
Supplies for this Session: No supplies to speak of, except Photoshop of course.

Page 2 | Page 3 | Chrome Variations

Preface

This month's Session is going to deal with creating a chrome-plated effect.
However, the things talked about here can be applied to all reflective surface effects. That includes such materials as stainless Steel, Glass, Plastic, Mercury, Polished Marble , Glazed Wood and anything else you can think of actually. They're all covered here with respect to their reflective natures.

To see or not to see...

Ok first of all, before we start trying to produce any effect we need to know everything we can about what makes up the properties of the effect.
For our Session we will want to be knowing what makes chrome look the way it does.

To answer that we need to know a bit about how objects cast reflections.
If an object has a perfectly smooth, unflawed surface we can expect that it will cast a perfectly unflawed reflection. Right?
Think of a mirror. If it is perfectly flat we can expect that it will cast, or reflect, an exact mirrored duplicate of whatever it is reflecting. Some materials will not produce an exact replica of what they reflect though. This is usually due to the material having a somewhat 'textured' quality to it's surface. The more large and detailed the texture of the surface is, the less it will cast an exact or even good reflection of it's surroundings.
This does not however mean that it does not have reflective properties.

That brings us to another thing to consider when thinking of how to create a reflective surface effect:
Every object that is capable of casting a 'mirrored' type of reflection will take on the properties of it's surroundings. That means if you put a mirror in a brightly lit room with pink walls and a green ceiling and spagetti hanging from the ceiling, then that's exactly what you'll see being reflected by the mirror. If you were standing in that same room with a large chrome-plated ball in your hands and you looked into the ball, you would see relatively the same thing as you saw in the mirror, because chrome is a highly reflective material.
But would the objects you see in the reflection of the chrome ball be as perfect as the reflection you see in the mirror? No. The ball has other properties, besides being reflective, that cause the reflections it casts to be flawed or distorted.

The simplest way to imagine how a shiny object will cast a reflection of it's surroundings is to look at the objects shape.
If the object is flat it will cast flat, and generally untainted reflections. Which really means that it will cast an exact reversed copy, or 'mirrored' copy, of the objects in it's surroundings.
If the object is round or curved it will cast reflections that appear to be rounded or curved.
And if the object has both of these characteristics in it's design then we can expect it's reflections to have them as well.

I hope you're still with me on this? It's really quite simple to understand. If you have any doubts or questions about what I'm saying just look around you at all of the reflective objects in your home. You'll see these principles at work and understand them more clearly. You might notice that I am doing a lot more talking than normal.
That's because the actual steps to creating this effect are quite short & simple. So I thought you might like to hear a bit about my own thoughts on this subject before we actually get down to doing it.
If not... then simply flip through the pages till you get to the good stuff!

Ok, now that we've covered the basics, let's move on to creating our chrome-plated effect.
I think you're going to be surprised at just how simple it can be.
No special filters or plug-ins required here! ;?)
And because of that you may notice that my effect looks somewhat different than others you may have seen elsewhere.

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