Gold Text

This turned out to be a intermediate/Advanced user tutorial. I have included the tool commands and there location if Novice users would like to try. Adjustment Layers, Layer Overlaying and channels will be used for this tutorial and it helps if you're familiar with them.

For this lesson I used the font "Garamond Bold at 215 pixels big. You may download this font to follow along if you like. I have a Windows Version here.

1.) Make a new RGB Image 175 pixels wide by 175 pixels high. Lets fill the background layer with some color or texture. I encourage you to use the color I have, it really goes well with the gold. If you want this color, double click the Foreground color on the tool bar and you will then see the color picker. Where it says R, G, B, enter the numbers I have and then click OK. Now fill the background layer in.

2.) Lets go into channels: Window >Show Channels. Now make a new Channel, this becomes "Alpha 1"

3.) Use the Type Tool ( press T ) and make a lowercase "g" in Alpha 1. Deselect selection ( Ctrl-D ).

4.) Make a Duplicate of that channel by dragging Alpha 1 to the new channel button. Now Gaussian Blur Alpha 2. ( Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur ) Enter 3.4 for radius and click OK. Hold down the Control key and click on Alpha 1. Invert that selection and then press the Delete Key. Now Deselect
( Ctrl-D ).

5.) Go back to the Layers ( Windows>Show Layers ). Click on the Background Layer, then make a new Layer ( Layer>New>Layer ) and fill it in with White.

6.) Go to >Filter>Render>Lighting Effects. Ok match my settings close as you can, this also goes for the 2 colors I have. Click those spots to bring up the color picker. For the top one I used R –253 G-217 B-71. Make the Properties color on the bottom about the same.

7.) Load Alpha 1: Select>Load Selection and choose "Alpha 1" Under Channel and click OK. Inverse Selection: Select>Inverse and press Delete. Now Deselect ( Ctrl-D ).

After that I decided to give it a cool Drop Shadow to bring it out a bit: Layer>Effects>Drop Shadow and I included a shot of the set up I used above.

8.) Hold down the Control Key and click on Layer 1. Make a new layer and then fill the selection in with the brown that I made, this is kind of important so it will produce the right tone. Now choose "Color" from the layers pop down menu. Don’t lose your selection yet.

layerpopdown.gif (1437 bytes)

Ok it looks pretty cool right now, but sometimes we need more brighter gold with stronger highlights. We’ll also work on the toning a bit.

9.) Make a new layer. Contract the selection about 6 ( Select>Modify>Contract ). Fill with 90% White: Edit>Fill. Deselect ( Ctrl-D ). Take the Opacity of that layer down to 65. Now Gaussian Blur ( Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur ). This part is really a personal choice. I used 1.7. Ok now choose "Color Dodge" from the layers popdown menu.

layerpopdown.gif (1437 bytes)

10.) For more brass tone, Load Alpha 1: Select>Load Selection. For Channel choose Alpha 1 and click OK. Make an Adjustment Layer: Layer>New>Adjustment Layer. For "Type" make sure its set to Hue/Saturation and click OK. Now click on the Load button and Load this Hue file I have for you. Click on this icon and download the file.

Load it and click OK. You are done.

After this tutorial was made, I was playing around with the effect and actually found by using other different size fonts and images that the effect actually looked even better. I've included some of those tests and a description of what I did. Everything below was made with this tutorial with only a few extra adjustments.


	Here's a sample logo. I applied some Noise to Layer 1 to give it more detail and when it came time to blur layer 3, I only did just a touch. This font had rough edges already made. So if you like this look then try roughing up the edges of your letter when you're channels like in Step 3.

	This next shot is a sample idea on what you can use this gold with. The background texture you see was made with my Old Gold Tutorial here.
	This one shines so bright I think it hurts my eyes a little. The only difference here is I made my "Height" bigger and made more exposure when doing the Lighting Effects part. Sense it was brighter my Color Burn effect came out even brighter.
	This was made when my text was really big, then I sized it down smaller. So yes it does matter about size. Try doing this with bigger text and you'll get different results.

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