Beveled Metal in Photoshop
This is an advanced Photoshop tutorial, which assumes solid knowledge of the Photoshop interface and features, including the lighting effects filter. If you need more experience, check out the lighting effects tutorial.


1 Create an image 500x500 pixels. Make a new layer, and fill it with a medium gray.
RGB(115,115,115)

In the the Menu, select Filter > Noise > Add Noise... Set the amount to 35, select Gaussian and check on Monochromatic.


2 Filter > Blur > Motion Blur... 75 Pixels

Then, Image > Adjust > Brightness / Contrast...
Set Brightness to -10, and Contrast to +35

Double click on this channel in the layers window, and name it Full Metal Texture


3 Create a new Channel, name it Rounded Box by double clicking on it, and build a rounded box in the center. If you don't know how to quickly make rounded objects, visit my rounding tutorial.

Create a copy of the channel, by dragging it onto the New Channel Button.


4 Next, drag the new channel onto the Load channel as selection button , so that it selects the outline of your round box.

Gaussian Blur the selection by 18 pixels by going Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... 18 pixels

Then, Gaussian Blur it by 9 pixels, 6 pixels and finally 3 pixels. That's 4 blurs, people!

Invert the Selection Ctrl+Shift+I, select black as your foreground color (D), and fill the selection Alt+Backspace to get rid off the jaggies.


5 Contract the selection by 48 pixels. To do this, go Select > Modify > Contract... 16 Pixels, and repeat this step 2 times.

Then, feather the selection 25 pixels, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+D and then fill it with a medium gray of your choice.


6 Select the First Channel (the one with the rounded box, not blurred), and press the Load channel as selection button

Now, Go back to the Layers window, and right click on the layer with the metal texture on it (Full Metal Texture), and select Layer Via Copy. It will make a new layer with only the part of the texture that you had selected. Double click on the new layer, and name it Metal Texture.

Next, select the Full Metal Texture layer, and fill the whole layer over with a dark gray.


7 Go back to the Channels, and make the Rounded Box channel a selection by dragging it onto the Load channel as selection button .

Back to the Layers window, create a new layer and drag it underneath the layer named Metal Texture. Fill the selection with a medium/light gray.

Click the eye icon on the Metal Texture layer to hide it.


8 Select the layer with the Plain Gray rounded box, and in the menu select Filter > Render > Lighting Effects...

Click on the image on the left for a larger version of the Lighting Effects Window.

Set the texture channel to the channel with the blurred white box, and gray section in the center (the second channel). The white parts on the channel create the high areas on the rendering, and the dark areas are lower. This channel is a height map for the lighting effects.

The values for the lighting effects are as follows:

Create 2 lights, one Spotlight coming from the top-left, and a blue Omni light coming from the bottom-right. To change the color of the light, click on the color box in the right area of the Light Type section on the Lighting Effects Window. For more help creating and managing lights, visit the lighting effects tutorial.

Gloss: 0
Material: 69
Exposure: 0
Ambience: 8
Height: 100%


Double click on the lighting effects layer, and name it Lighting Effects.


9 Near the top of the Layers window, click on Preserve Transparency and then Gaussian Blur the lighting effects layer by 6 pixels. Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur...

Then, unhide the texture layer, floating above the lighting effects layer, by clicking on the empty box on the left of the layer.



Now, select the layer Metal Texture, and set the blending mode to overlay.



10 Make a copy of the layer Lighting Effects (by dragging it onto the Create new Layer button ), move the new layer above the Metal Texture layer, set the opacity to 30%, and set the blending mode to Color Dodge.


Select the layer Metal Texture, and go Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast, and drag the contrast slider down until you achieve the desired metal texture.

Put a good drop shadow on it by selecting the bottom Lighting Effects layer, right clicking on it, and selecting Effects.... Or, check out my Good Drop Shadows Tutorial.

Finally, to add to the effect, select the gray background layer, and go Filter > Render > Lighting Effects... and change the Texture Channel to None.

Check out what I've done with this tutorial:
Test 1 | Test 2