Maybe it's too early for Christmas just yet but I was reminded the other day of one of my childhood memories of that striped hard candy you see around Christmas time. I was also playing around with different settings in the Python based Layer Effects filter and ended up with this.



I saved everything so if anyone woud like to know how to do it, I'll be glad to help.

Almost makes me want to lick my computer screen Drac.

Heard that! I think I even have some left over from last year. It doesn't really go bad I guess. Thing is these all have a faint licorice taste which I'm not really fond of.

it looks a bit like this tutorial:
http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/crea ... dy-letters

draconian: fun effect ! to me it doesn't look much like candy, but i suppose that comes of me being swedish, we have our own candy traditions over here.

Yeah, that's a good one. It's been around for a while and someone always resurects it around Christmas time every year. I particularly like the way they created the highlights in that tut. There's another one similar to that one only using different methods.

I didn't use bump mapping and stayed mostly with the Layer Effects Inner Shadow, Bevel and Emboss, and Glossy Stroke filters. What was cool is that purely by acident I turned off a layer and saw a different effect so I made a couple of alternate layers and came up with the effects below. Turned out to be sortof a universal method.

Plastic


Polished Wood


Green Clay


....and you know by now that I can't resist making some new shiny metal.

Drac, those are all great. I particularly like your first one. It looks good enough to eat.

Thanks O. I'll put you down for 1 1/2 pounds and have it sent right over.

As long as you don't try to send me your licorice flavored stuff. I don't much care for it either. I'd rather have fruit flavored if you please.

O I will take your share of the licorice. I love it. I will also take the green one if it is spearmint or wintergreen flavor.

Mint ones are good, too. I like wintergreen the best. Cinnamon and ginger are good too. You can have the licorice Molly. I'll take the other.

Actually, I will take anything that has sugar in it.

YOu will have to fight me over the extra licorice...I love it!

Christmas can never come too early for me! It turned out really nice, Drac. I like how to coloring is subtle; nothing overly fake-looking...

[quote="Graechan"]

Nothing wrong with the way you did yours and there is lots of room for improvement in mine as well. After I posted the image, the volume layers looked way too bright so I toned them down a notch and I think it looks better now.

I saved everything and made a few screenshots of those particular settings just in case someone wanted a tut so it's no stretch to throw one together. I've started saving stuff and making notes on everything I experiment with now so I can duplicate the effects later. Give me a day or so and I'll get a tut posted.

The versatility is what surprised me the most about this effect.

draconian: yay! tutorial !

You still have a lot of catching up to do. You sure you want another tutorial?

I'm still in the candy mode. My candy ended up looking more like glass than candy so I made ornaments out of it.

They still look great O even if the stripes didn't turn out like you wanted. Fantastic job on the gradient you used on the ornament caps. Looks real. I just downloaded 100 different PS contours to convert for use with Layer Effects, or at least into Curve presets. I'm fond of the 'Double Ring' contour too!