I was playing around with the color channels in the curves dialog box and found that it can be used to make a metalic looking surface out of embossed images.

In this example I selected the background and on a new layer pasted black then with the embossed image that I created out of the heightmap I simply used the curves dialog box and randomly used the pencil tool to make squiggly lines till I got a good looking silver metalic look. I then used the colors that I got on the surface as background colors for a background blend on the top layer I created first.



Oh, I also used a lighting effect filter to accentuate it a little.

the first picture is great, looks like translucent porcelain

Making the height map is the hard part but totally made in gimp. Usually people use Aspire ($2,000) or Artcam ($10,000) to make those.

i think you described that technique a while ago, didnt you ?

something with filling with a dimpled gradient, right ?

Esper

Filling with Shaped Angular gradients is a very useful tool for that kind of stuff. Those leaves on the design were done using a curved gradient that was white at the edges then dark and curved in grey at the center. But also a lot of layer masks and modes and soft airbrushing.

Alan

wow, do you think you could post a screenshot of the gradient in editor mode ?
or perhaps even the gradient file ?

id like to see it !

Pegleg - the results are excellent, loving both images.

I've attached the leaf gradient. I made the leaf like this:

First you make a shape with the pen tool and hit Shift+V to turn it into a selection. Then you fill with the leaf gradient set to shaped angular. Then make a new layer and fill with a straight FG to BG gradient and turn that layer mode to screen.

If you wanted to then colorize it then you just put a layer above it all set to color mode and fill it with a color.

That came out really nice, PegLeg44!