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Blue Steel
Objective: Produce a temporary gradient for creating an image with a blue steel appearance.
Tools Used: Selection Tool, Rectangle, Alpha Channel, Flood Fill Tool, Raster Deform Tool, Move Tool
Palettes Used: Tool Options Palette, Tools Toolbar, Materials Palette, Layers Palette
Effects Used: Gradients, Brightness and Contrast, Mirror Image
Steel, chrome, metal, and now blue steel! Steel work can become dull and boring if you only use the basic steel colors. By making your own colors and gradients, you can turn a simple and dull piece of gray/white/black steel into awesome blue colored steel (or any other color for that matter).
In this tutorial, we will show you how to choose the colors to create an instant, temporary, gradient to give the illusion of a blue steel color. When you want to create a certain gradient, all you do it click on the foreground color and select your color and then so the same for the background color. After selecting your colors, go to the materials palette and click on the gradient tab.
You will see a little square with the gradient you selected, usually in the upper left hand corner, (the first little square). You can preview the gradient by filling any kind of selection or applying it to an entire new layer to see if it is the look you were after. If you like it, the gradient will stay there as long as you have it in the history, or you can create and save a custom gradient….but that is a whole other tutorial.
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