You didn't think the worn metal was impressive enough, or you're looking for something a little bit meaner. That's fine, just step this way to the more advanced metal tutorial. That's right, this tutorial is going to seriously kick with steel-toe boots and when you're done, you'll want to do it again! We're gonna forge, scratch, and fabricate a nice piece of steel to use in your projects and it's going to be exceptionally detailed down to the very last nick and cut. All you need is just a little Photoshop heat.

    Because this is a slightly more advanced tutorial, we're going to speed through this first half which is setting up the base of the texture. So lets start with a new image, 512 x 512. Hit the "D" key to set your default colors and proceed to Filter > Render > Clouds. Now go to your Image > Adjust options, select Brightness / Contrast, and reduce the contrast level to -85. You'll get something close to an even 50% gray, give or take a few valleys of lighter shades. Next add 2% of monochrome Noise with "ordered distribution". Now go to Filter > Brush Strokes > Angled Strokes and try the settings shown here. You may want to repeat the filter once or twice to get some more defined lines, like the ones in this example.

    So far so good. Lets make a new layer over what we've done so far, and again, use the clouds filter to get the party started. Reduce the contrast of the clouds to -85 and add 2% monochrome noise in ordered distribution. What we're going to do instead of using Angled Strokes is use the Spatter filter (in the Brush Strokes filter sub-menu) and use the settings shown here. Again, you're gonna want to repeat this filter a dozen times or so until you start seeing some real defined patterns like the ones shown in this step. Now before we leave the top layer alone, change the layer's blending mode to "Lighten". This will let all those cool metallic scratches from the background show through.

    Jumping back to the bottom layer again, we're gonna adjust the intensity of the scratches by reducing the contrast to a value between -30 and -60 and your brightness between -5 and -20...dependant on what looks best. I reduced the contrast of my image to -40 and my brightness by -10 to get this. The only thing left to do now is make the scratches look varried, and one of the best ways is to use a displacement map.

    To use a displacement map, you'll first need to create one, so make a new image at 256 x 256. Use Filter > Render > Clouds once and then save the image as "displace.psd" in any folder (make sure you save as a "Photoshop PSD" file or the next step won't work). Now go back to the bottom layer of your texture and apply the Displace filter found in the Filter > Distort sub-menu. I suggest using the settings shown here. Once you click the "OK" button, a dialog box will appear, asking you to choose an "Imagemap" to use for displacing. Find and select the "displace.psd" you just saved to apply it to the image. Now those scratches should look a bit more interesting.

    From here on out, it's yours to mold into whatever you wish. This base texture doesn't tile, but anything is possible...especially if you know the tricks of the trade found in the "Basics of Creating Textures" article. With enough patience and fine tuning, you can really do some serious damage to this hunk of metal, just check out this simple example (Note: you can learn how to make these, and other details in Part 2 of the Creating Steel Textures tutorial.). So in closing, my hope is this tutorial will prove useful to you. Feel free to send me stuff for feedback, or just to show off what you've done with my tutorials. Peace out, gang!

Questions or comments? E-mail Mr. Lake