dull plastic effect
 

I've seen plenty of people explain how to do a nice shiny brushed metal effect but I want to know how to do a dull plastic effect. You know like the plastic fascia tomost home electronic appliances. But not with a shine.

Anybody care to drop me some hints / tutorials will get a mention in the readme.txt if I make a skin out of it:)

What area 'level' are you trying to cover, just a small selection or the whole main bitmap?
I would generally Gaussian blur the image alot (more control) within a selection to get a dull flatish look.. but sometimes bevelling the image (it generally goes a bit darker) will get a good effect aswell, depending what plugins you have installed of course. Smudging I think wont really help you much.

to be honest skinme I use photoshop for my plastic effect. I make my marquee selection copy to a new layer or mask then run the filter: Plastic Wrap, and set my layer option opacity to about 45% or lower depending upon the degree for which I want the plastic to show. I also, like to create a clouds/difference cloud layer at times then do a plastic wrap filter on it and use it to do another plastic wrap overlay of the area. The only problem with the plastic wrap filter that I have seen is the fact that it takes some airbrushing to complete the effect in some areas when working with skin elements.

:)

a 40x40 Grid for example wouldn't work well with the clouds but, probably would do great with a gradient layer. Then you run your filter plastic wrap and then airbrush in/out what you do or do not want.

Is that Plastic Wrap a built in function with PhotoShop, or an addon plugin? I wish there was something similar for PSP instead of their spastic soft plastic that doesnt look like plastic thing. Oh well, I still think PSP is easier to use than most other paint proggys around.:D

It's build in PS. Me thiks PSP is easier to use but PS has more advanced features.... (esp colors) :D


Can't offer you much help on plastic effect...unless you don't want it to be glossy like this


http://robouk.gdesign.nl/tuts/shiny/img10.gif

Hmmm, this got me courious.

I tried a few things and the best I could come up with is this.

First, You didn't say weather or not this is for a texture overlay
for a skin. Or for buttons or sliders.

This works half-assly on a button.

Create a file say 100 x 100, make the background white.

Create a new layer. and make a button or shape of a button.
A darker color works best. Add an inside bevel thought layer options.

Create a new layer and use the button you created to make a selection.

Now add some white to the upper and left side of the selection.
Garrison blur for a highlight.

Drag your button layer 1 to create a new button layer.
Move it above your highlight layer. "For a shiny button you would
leave the hightlight layer above"

Now adjust the brightness/contast to negitive numbers to darken
the upper button layer. Set the layer blend mode to multiply.
reduce the opacity to about 80 percent and it should look somewhat
dull while still maintaining some highlight.

Thats the best I could do....

Pixelpusher..

This was a bright shiny neon green button. Looks pretty dull to me now.

Pixel pusher, there may be easier techniques involved when creating a dull effect shown in the green button, without the amount of time spent using layers.
You show a good way of getting control of the object through your technique shown there, muchly used in error correction processes:)
Anything basically blurring and changing rgb colour schemes is useful. The right amount of blurring alone will decrease any amount of shine on the object. Its then just toying with the amount of shadow you apply after the blurring process.

Sorry...heh


I used 4 Layers


First Layer = Red Gradient - Oval.
Second Layer = Copy of First Layer (with Stylize/Plastic Opac=100%)
Third Layer = Copy of First Layer (with Artistic/Chrome Opac=35%)
Fourth Layer = Selection of First Layer then Select>Modify>Border 2px
Fill the layer with a black/white linear gradient. Send this layer to back and then do lighting effect with 35 mm prime.

Combine your layers, and you should end up with a button similar to what I have.