instead of working on pictures that i never seem to finish to my satisfaction these days i gave mysellf some time to just play with g'mic. i wanted t try and make some fun text effects using mostly g'mic and here are some of the results - i did use some embossing and stuff too to make bevels, but the main part of all this is g'mic:


and of course i wouldn't be me if i didn't end up doing some of these:

AnMal, they are all grrrrrreat !!!!!!!!!!!

i like the glassy and the golden one best

and i demand an explanation of how you did the gold text asap !!!!!
urgent !

Interesting studies, AnMal. Your paisleys are really beautiful.

Thank you ! yes, i always tell people to play more because that's the only thing that helps me develop or get on when i'm stuck. and g'mic is a great toy.
esper: thank you! the glass one is one of my favourites too, the golden is as usual not the right kind of gold. i don't know if i cangive you exact instructions but here are some rough ones:
1. you need a texture or pattern with a sort of unevenly faceted surface. i made one but don't remember how. i layer masked out the text.
2. jayprich's "specular bumps" (under testing)
3. bevel using the ordinary emboss filter.
3. "sepia" under colours, then play around with the colours menu til you get nice gold tones, but not too high contrasts.
4. duplicate texture layer and change layer mask to an outline stroke of text.
5. add highlights with "light patch" under lights and shadows
6. run "gradient norm" on the same two layers, set output to new layer. colour to alpha away the black, think the result should be set to grain merge.
7. bevel for the outline using the ordinary emboss filter.
8. run "rodilius" under atistic on a copy of the outline layer and a black layer put underneath it. play with settings, low amplitude.
9. colour to alpha away the black in the resulting layer and put it under the text layers.

don't remember the steps for shadows and background, could probably reconstruct but won't bother unless someone says it's important.