Metallic Wires
February 2nd, 2014
This is a simple way to make metallic looking wires.
Prequisites
Please know how to do the following before using this tutorial.
Objective
Finished result

Tutorial
- Open a new, blank canvas. I will be using a 300x150px one.
-
Create a New Layer
. I will name mine wire bg.
-
Using the Rectangular Marquee
, make a selection that is about 25px in height.
-
On layer wire bg, fill the selection with a light grey color using the Paint Bucket tool
.
-
Choose a dark grey color, and then select the Gradient tool
. Make sure the gradient goes from color to transparent and is a Linear Gradient.
-
Create a gradient from the top to about halfway down.
-
Create another gradient from the bottom to about halfway up.
-
On a separate canvas that is 12px wide, create a pattern. It should have 1px white, 1px black, and 12px of transparent space. (Tutorial: Making and using patterns)
-
Back to our first canvas, make a New Layer
. I will name mine lines.
-
Make sure the selection is still around the wire background. Fill the selection with the pattern that we just created onto layer lines.
-
Lower the Opacity of layer lines to about 30%.
Now we have…
-
Make another New Layer
above the Background layer. I will name mine shadow.
-
With the selection still around the wire, fill layer shadow with black using the Paint Bucket tool
.
(This won’t show up yet since it’s behind the wire, so I’m just showing a preview of the layer.)
-
Now we’re finally done with the selection around the wire that we’ve been holding onto.
Deselect the selection (Ctrl + D), and apply a Gaussian Blur on layer shadow (Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur). Set it to about 4 or 5px.
-
Duplicate layer shadow (Ctrl + J) to make the shadow a little darker.
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That’s it! Make as many as you want!
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