How To Make The Chrome Effect With Photoshop

This is why it has become the most-used software in the world; even the professionals who work for the famous newspapers make massive use of it. In addition to the ” traditional ” photographic correction effects, there are several fun filters, such as the chrome effect to make the subject of the image look like an object made of metal.

Let’s see how to proceed step by step to achieve the chrome effect.

Prepare the image

The chroming effect works on the color gradations to obtain the reflection points. To start using it, it is always advisable to transform the image in black and white in advance, so as not to have too many elements that can be interpreted as dark when the filter is applied.

To do this, we must go directly to the menu at the top, click on ” image, ” then ” adjustments ” and ” remove saturation “: the image will be black and white, or choose ” mode “, ” black and white ” convert it and bring it back then color to be able to work with filters, in this way we will have an image in only two colors, but on a standard palette. We can now change the brightness always from ” image “,” adjustments ” and then ” levels “.

Adjust the image

Try to adjust lights and shadows on the image to avoid that the chrome effect highlights too many dark parts by confusing them with excavated parts. The filter is not very intelligent and tends to recognize the light parts as reliefs and the dark ones as in the shade or depressions.

Based on the color gradient, i.e,. the speed with which the image changes from light to dark, then he chooses to interpret it as a shadow or part excavated. Then adjust light and dark to make sure that the gradients are not too steep.

Apply the filter

Once a good result is obtained, we go again to the upper menu, click on ” filter “, then on ” sketch ” and finally on ” chrome effect “. A new window will open in which we can see a preview of the effect applied to our image: if the photo results in excessive enlargement, it will be possible to reduce it using the ” – ” in the lower left.

Preview is necessary to understand how the filter will behave, and based on what you will see, you must go back to the previous step and adjust the chiaroscuro and correct any artifacts related to the sampling, which in simple terms are the pixelated parts. When you are convinced, apply the filter.

Finish the job

The work is almost completed: it is just a matter of refining the image from the sidebar on the right, where we will find the necessary parameters to obtain a more suitable result for what we want it to come out of our work. For example, we can decide to insert more or less effects in the image itself, also based on the subject of the photo, and the result we will get.

In this phase, we can adjust the blurring, correct the tones of the chrome, and add other elements. Remember that Photoshop, thanks to the command history, allows you to cancel all the steps if you have not made an image save.

The project can always be modified, and for this reason it has a very high weight in Mb. Once everything has been changed, click on ” ok ” at the top, and after returning to the home screen, we just have to save the image in any folder of the PC of our choice. At this point, the work is finished, and we can proceed with the modification of other images.