Wow, that is exactly what I wanted to learn how to do, thanks so much for the tutorial on it. I cannot wait to try it out tonight...so using a bump map, I could also add any texture I wanted, or keep it plain. Awesome to know. I entertained thoughts of having the surface plain but maybe with a few little nicks here and there.

Yes, it sure is cool. I made a pdf out it to try later. I really like that checkerboard gold BG...was that bumpmapped?

excellent information, GnuTux !

thank you

Cool, Mike

Thanks Gnutux for the tute!

Wow that is very cool Rellik419... It looks a lot like the colors you use in your sig.

Thanks Molly. Nope the sig is a different gradient. On the regular image, I went with Gnutux's settings and same gradient. Just did my own tweaking to it.

it may be a good idea to not bumpmap text/ornaments/etc directly into the gold

the reason is: you cant tweak the result without changing the gold as well

instead i would suggest to either use layerfx without merging down

or bumpmap a grey layer of the same size as the goldbullion and then apply a colour to alpha with the same grey

The second one is my favorite, really well done Esper!

thanks Baukje, but there was really no skill involved

i just used a script on an image that i googled and produced 7 gradients
thats hardly rocketscience

important to me is helping to develop the lighting effects/enviromap technique because gold is harder to achieve than chrome
really all the credit should go to GnuTux

I've managed to achieve some pleasing gold colours by working with a chrome effect, then inverting colours and then using the palette map option with the default gold palette selected.

haha, yeah he4rty
thats exactly what came to my mind when i typed what you quoted, but dont tell anybody

Nice results, folks.

I'll bet with a little experimenting with various gradients and script settings, a really good gold effect can be achieved. The idea of starting out with a chrome effect, then altering the palette, sounds lke an interesting approach.

Well I did this exact according my interpretation of the tute and I ended with this.
Was I supposed to merge the black bump down into the white layer? That is the only way I could get it to work. Mine didn't end up with a transparent background, it is all in one.

That actually looks really nice, Molly. Even though it's not gold, I really like the Environment map you got there.

Yes, the back rectangle should be on a transparent layer by itself. The Bump Map should be merged down to a while background on a 2nd layer, after you've blurred the edge.

It appears that you might have ran the lighting effects filter on the Bump Map layer, rather than the black rectangle. You need to highlight the black rectangle layer, run the lighting filter, then ensure you select the Bump Map layer under the Bump Map tab in the LE filter.

O, okay, I did run it on the bumped layer. I put the original black layer at the bottom cuz I thought we just used that to make the bump. I put the white layer in the center and the bump layer at the top and merged down to the bump, and used that to run the filters.
I will do another one till I get it right thanks. I really like the gradient I used too. I always liked that one. thanks

Gotta say Molly, the colors are stunning!

thanks Rellik419

one more... maybe not