Adding Gold Effect on Objects in a photograph

[phyrrae]

Hello,

First of all i'd like you to know that i am a new PS user with 3d modelling and texturing/mapping experience in 3ds.

I've found myself in a business of creating photorealistic images for a company which is selling golden plated objects.

My employer is also asking me to manipulate the appereance of certain objects in his photographs and turn them into golden meterials. I will try to attach an example below.

Thus i need assistance. I need to know the accurate technique, workflow, considerations and most importantly, examples of the workflow (tutorials) which ı could not manage to find on the net. (probably just because i didn't exactly know where to look up)

Many thanks to you in advance.

 

[Tom Mann]

For purposes of comparison, it would have been very useful to have had a photo of a similar object produced by your employer that actually was gold plated. Without it, I have to guess about a number of things.

That being said, I find that the easiest way to deal with a request like this is to simply bring the image into ACR, and then manipulate the very first color sliders that you see (labeled, "Temperature" and "Tint"), as well as the "vibrance" and "saturation" sliders (below on the same page) to get an acceptable color.

In the case of your first image, part of the metal was red / orange color (copper?), so that had to be dealt with separately, after the desired color of the main area of metal was established. For the red/orange areas of the metal, I simply used the "Hue / saturation / lightness" sliders in ACR to turn the orange into gold (Alchemists -- eat your heart out ;-) ).

As a final step, I adjusted tonalities using the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites and blacks sliders. This necessitated some small tweaks of the color sliders, and, at that point, I was done with this pass through ACR.

To perceive the gold correctly, it's very important for the eye of the viewer to have a neutral reference color, as well as colors other than gold somewhere in the image. The corners of your image provided these. To get these colors looking good, I brought the image back through ACR a second time, but this time, adjusted it to provide good colors in the corners, letting the metal take on whatever color it wanted.

As a final step, I brought both tweaked versions of the original into PS in separate, stacked layers, and used the usual selection tools to make a layer mask that selected one ACR version for the metal, and the 2nd ACR vrsion for the rug / background.

The result is shown below. I hope this is reasonably close t what you had in mind. If it isn't, please post a "target" image, ie one which shows the desirable colors.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[phyrrae]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for letting me know about ACR. It seems like an easy but efficient way to handle a kind of work at my hands. I'll have a closer look at the software and get myself familiar to it.

There are however, a few points that i'd like to ask for further information;

1st - Can you be more specific on the layer blending part at Photoshop?
2nd - Consider the object is over a dark, glossy floor which receives reflections of light emitted from gold. What sort of tools and techniques would be valid to start working with? -Well, my personal preference would be a much lighter environment with less direct lights with the shooting in the studio but this is how they do the business

and an additional 3rd question - You'll notice a blurry reflection on the object which is morphed to the curves of the top. Which techniques in PS are good to start with?

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Phyrrae (or whatever your name is ;-) ) - see below for replies:

1. "1st - Can you be more specific on the layer blending part at Photoshop?"

The only thing I used to composite the two versions of the image was a layer mask. Layer masks are black where you don't want that layer to be visible, and white in the parts you want to see. I did nothing unusual with layer blending modes, or the "blend-IF" sliders. If you are not familiar with layer masks, there are many tutorials on the subject. Here's one tutorial that looks good, at least on a quick scan of it:
http://photo.net/learn/digital-photography-workflow/advanced-photoshop-tutorials/layer-masks/ .

2. "Consider the object is over a dark, glossy floor which receives reflections of light emitted from gold. What sort of tools and techniques would be valid to start working with?..."

IMHO, this requires considerable more artistic skill and sensibility than the previous question. First, you have to determine where the reflections are located, or should be located. If some reflections on the floor actually are present, you should be able to temporarily increase the brightness of the image to locate them. I tried this on the image you posted at 6:54 AM yesterday, but the floor did not look reflective and I couldn't see reflections of any color.

Because no floor reflections were visible in the image you posted, to show you how this might work, I've attached one of my images that shows lots of reflections on the marble interior of a building in NYC. The first version is pretty much straight out of my little point and shoot camera. The second version shows how I changed the reflections of the overhead lights from white to yellow-gold, and how I changed the reflections of the side light panels on the floor to a much stronger green-cyan hue.

The way I did this was simply to select each of the reflections that I wanted to change and then apply the photo-filter built into PS to that group - once with a yellow filter, the 2nd time with a green filter.


3) " and an additional 3rd question - You'll notice a blurry reflection on the object which is morphed to the curves of the top. Which techniques in PS are good to start with?..."

IMHO, this question is more difficult than both #1 and #2. About the only way I can think of doing this is to select each of the areas where you see (...or might envision...) reflections of other objects, and then do "something" to all of them (eg, change saturation, hue, luminosity, etc.) to give the viewer a cue that these areas really are reflections.

The 3rd attached image illustrates how I selected the dark reflections around the bottom of the gold plated cover and changed them to give a suggestion of them being fairly dark red reflections, not reflections of something extremely dark - almost black.

The "trick" to all of these sorts of adjustments is being sufficiently familiar with Photoshop to be able to quickly and accurately perform relatively complex selections, and then, make changes to the selected areas by selecting and using one of the conventional PS tools (eg, levels, curves, filters, etc.).

HTH,

Tom M

 

[phyrrae]

I've checked the tutorial you provided above, thanks. Using the selection tools on well balanced photographs is much easier i presume. So i will begin working with layer masks and learn to apply various types in proper values to achieve a better understanding on the tool and along with it, -like you advice- study adjustments generally.