Tutorial: Enamel Effect

In this tutorial i will explain to you, how i made the Metallic Kitsch texteffects.

01. Create your canvas, and dont make it too small – i used 660x400 in a dark brown (#160404) with some added G'MIC samj Test Noise to give it texture.

(bigger canvas would be better but not so good for making screenshots and tutorials, so its relatively small...)

02. Type your text. "Lack" is german for lacquer.

A curly, thin font looks good, but dont choose a font that is too thin, as this will not work well with the highlights !

I used the font 'James Fajardo' 369px in my usual 50 grey (#808080).

03. Align your text and apply 'Layer to Imagesize'.

04. Alpha select your text, save the selection to a channel.

05. Fill the selection with a gradient on a new transparent layer.

I recommend creating your own gradient with three colours to get a strong look.

(for more control i filled the whole canvas and afterwards rotated it into place, but that isnt a must)

06. Call up the layerfx script and try the following values:

The essential part for the effect we want to achieve is that you set the 'Surface Contour' to 'Cone' and the 'Gloss Contour' to 'Linear'.

Dont make the 'Depth' too harsh.

The 'Size' has to be chosen in such a way, so the conical bevels do not touch !

If the bevel looks ugly (jagged), apply a bit of 'Soften', but go with a small value.

Make sure the Lighing is strong so that you get a shiny highlight.

Test your values with the preview option until you are satisfied.

Make sure 'Merge with Layer' is UNCHECKED !

[Because there is something strange goin on with layergroups and layerfx (i think its a bug), you have to drag everything out of your folder.]

07. Activate the Highlight-layer, set the Mode to Normal and 100%, so you can better see it, then call up the Curves Tool.

Apply an alpha-curve that looks like a variation of 'Rollin Slope descending'.

I added some anchors for my piece to fine-tune the effect.

Because the Highlight overlap the text, i added a layermask from channel.

08. Repeat the same for the Shadowlayer, but you might go for something less extreme.

09. A variation of the technique is using different colours, other than black and white. 

For my piece i alpha-selected the Shadowlayer, pasted a green on it (#66795e) and set the Mode to 'Burn'.

The same for the Highlight (#c5c3db) and the Mode 'Screen'.

You can always vary these colours with Hue/Saturation/Lightness, 

levels or colour curves.

10. At last i added an Outer Glow (#adf691), with a Blur of 10 plus an alphacurve (~Gaussian).

Set the Mode to 'Dodge' because that in connection with the Noise, gave an interesting sparkle effect; plus a second Glow (Blur 40, #adf692) on top of it, set to 'Value'.

In this picture you see some variations, just by using different modes, opacity and order of the glowlayer.

And this is my final result, which concludes this tutorial. Hope you found it useful.

.....and the same without the glow