Shiny Metal Text

This one's a bit harder, so prepare to dig in. The final image looks like this, so decide now if it's worth the effort.

Start with a new image filled with black. This effect works better on some fonts than others. I'm using a font called Isabell, but if you have anything close to it, it should be OK.

Make the color RGB 178,178,178 or Hex #B2B2B2. This gray will work best for the next step. Change the Mode to 3D Round with a border of about 7, depending on the thickness of your font.

Open the Tone Map from the Format menu. Click on the Map tab at the top of the dialog box. Check the box next to Show control points. This is what you should see at this point:

Ulead has made this dialog box extremely difficult to work with, but here's the concept. There are six control point squares along the line in the grid. You can move each of these up or down or somewhat sideways, depending on their position. To experiment, move your cursor over the square on the bottom left. When you are over the correct position, the cursor will turn into a two-headed arrow. When it does, drag the square straight up to the top of the grid.

Now, the trick is to move these little squares around until they are in this position, give or take a few millimeters.

When all six squares are aligned as above, your text will look like this:

And now you have shiny metal text. But wait! There's more!

In the Object menu, click on Duplicate. Align it to the center of the image so that it is exactly on top of the original. Press CTRL+SHFT+ENTER, and in the Object Properties dialog change the Merge to Lighting or Overlay. In the Easy Palette, open the Natural Texture section of the Fill Gallery. Double-click on the Marble-4 preset.

Shiny gold text. Or just use a plain brown fill to make copper text.

Top

Same effect applied to a shape which was duplicated, filled with the Water-5 fill preset, Merge-Soft Light, then a Gaussian blur of 5.

And you wondered how this was done before BladePro and reflection maps. Hmmm.

One more thing. There's a button on the Tone Map that allows you to save a custom curve. Use it! When you finally get the right settings, you can load it back again at any time. It's saved as a .MAP file. Name it Shiny or something easy to remember. And remember where you saved it.

Back to Tricks