Custom Made Sig and Avatar [6]

Pallas,
Are you talking about this effect....?
Attachment 169425

PallasAthene said:

Thanks A Guy and Britton30 :-D Still have to practise a lot...Speaking of which...

...I've got a question for all of you...how on earth do you add that exquisite glass effect to the sigs? I've seen the layers in one of PooMan UK's tutorials, and the necessary layer is basically a copy of the avatar shape with progressively transparent pixels. Now how does one make that layer/copy the pattern in such a way that it's progressively transparent? Hope that made sense )

Well it depends pal ... "glassy effect" 1 compared to "shinny glass effect" 2 ..... I'm not to sure what you mean by "avatar shape" ... which program are you using and could you show some examples of what you are trying to achieve ... this way we might be able to steer you in the right direction but it has allot to do with layers/transparency's and layer modes :)

Well pal from what I can see Arc has applied a glassy effect



The shiny glass effect requires another reflective layer with an overlay mode setting a bit like this

That's precisely what I do not understand how to do. I know about layers in general and how to merge them, but I don't know anything about reflective layers or overlay modes or how to create them. How do you do this (in Photoshop Elements)? I was able to add a bit of a glass effect to the circle of fire for the sig I made for Arc, but that's because I used a filter called Wow Plastic. I don't find it that good, though, because the effect is not very smooth (the glossy/shiny effect does not become gradually transparent, it just kind of bulges out of the image) and cannot be modified much, so I tried making my own glossy layer and did all kinds of mad experiments for ages yesterday, but it just wouldn't work.

In other words, I don't know how to create this kind of layer which you've got in your tutorial on glossy buttons (if you click on the image below to enlarge it, it will have a black background and then you'll see what I'm trying to say):

Thanks for the appreciations , my beloved friends

Pallas, you are reminding me my initial learning phase . I was also in a puzzle how on earth they are making that terrible glossy effects ..... and I kept Nick very very busy with it . As I am able to learn it, it is not that tough . I will try to make the situation clear to you, I just need to download the PS elements trial and install it in my XP VM . Please let me have a few hours to do it .

Yes, that's it . You are just to edit the gradient from white to transparent , and then apply it on a blank layer on the top of the layer which you are trying to make glossy .

You may add a little bit of Gaussian blur , or even perspective (that I used in the last sig I made for Randy) :) It added a sense of depth there .

Okay, I think I'm getting the idea of how it works now...I'm very eager to test it at home Thank you very much for offering to test Photoshop Elements (fortunately it looks like there's no need to do that) and for checking out the tutorial to see if it's worth following :-D

Will also try out your suggestion with the Gaussian filter