Here's a thread where we tried to explain: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=947&start=0

Kevin

molly: good work! are you going to post your results when you've experimented? i think my favourite part of draconians metal tutorials is to see all the imaginitive uses people find for them

Yes I probably will AnMal, that is if I like it...lol

haha, thats funny Draconian, i was really hoping my question would give me a big new chunk of wisdom

i could see the logic behind choosing higher resolution
as i like to work with text a lot, that would have been the best solution to the jagged edges i get a lot with letters

so unless you want to print something out, 72ppi (the default when creating a new canvas) is the way to go ?
i agree, we need a new topic shedding some wisdom on ppi !

When you do lettering, have you tried alpha to selection and selection to path? I find paths are a great tool for smoothing out rough edges.

yes Erisian, very often

i like to tweak text: stretching and compressing, just to make it perfect for my eye
i always scale a path, never the selection or the actual layer

but some fonts seem to be very pixelated right from the beginning

Maybe alpha to selection, select>shrink 4 pixels, select>invert, Gaussian blur 3 pixels or something similar. Maybe even G'MIC thin brush smoothing.

I've made a few modifications:-

Desaturated the bars a little to simulate sun-fade, and thrown a little noise at them
Tried to put some gunge in the corners (needs more work)
Added a drop shadow on top of the bars to give a little more depth
And of course used rust from a photograph (see this thread for the source: http://www.gimpchat.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2775)


I might see if I can incorporate a gauge into this photo:


And I've a request for a tutorial on creating cracked glass to take this further.

Kevin

nice one Kevin

my first thought was Dune - Desert planet

is it on purpose the space between the yellow bars isnt the same ?


for the cracked glass effect, maybe this tutorial by GimpTricks will help ?

Nice work paynekj - looks well rusted.

pyanekj, that's so well made! so impressive with all that detail, the sun fade and the grunge in the corners and all that.

Hey Kevin. Nice work on the bars. The additional touches look good. Looks like every three bars you made a space adjustment as well. The rust is a bit overkill for my taste, but it would make a great bump texture and overlay. Maybe if you limited the rust to the shaped part and notthe surrounding flat areas.

Nice one esper, here is another one but it is Photoshop Broken Glass

Thanks, but the space adjustment was just it being late and me being careless (I made the first bar, copied and pasted it twice, then copied the three together and pasted them a couple of times just to speed things up)

The amount of rust is down to my personal taste (I like rust!) and I didn't want to present the indicator in isolation so using the same rust for the background was the quickest way.

esper & Molly, Thanks for the tutorials. Both use a stock image of broken glass so I might have to go and break something!

Kevin

Nice tutorial Drac.

Used the round gradient for the layer mask to try and make the bars look like one of those rotating gauges and added an indicator line.

nice work, he4rty!

Impressive "out of the box" thinking. Good job!

I've now assembled a composite image:


Kevin

Very cool and nice and rusty. good job Kevin.

that's again impressive, paynekj, it looks so seamless.