This tutorial will show you how I make a wire mesh effect as well as a steel metal effect. This can be used for interfaces as filler or any shape that can be selected.

I start by opening a new 200x200 image with a transparent background. I then apply a linear gradient using the Blue Steel 3 color gradient (included in psp file below) set as show in Fig. 1.

 

Fig. 1

I then add Image | Noise | Add set to Uniform and 8. Now I do Color | Gray Scale then Color | Increase Color Depth | 16 million colors (24bit). You should now have something

similar to Fig. 2 below.

Fig. 2

I now add some Image | Gaussian Blur set to 1. This gives us an iron look to our background. We now pick the Selection Tool set to Round with anti alias checked. I start in the center at (100,100) and select out till you have numbers similar as in Fig. 3 below. Save this selection to your alpha channel at this point also.

Fig. 3

We now will add a little bit of bevel so go to Image | Effects | Inner Bevel and set it as shown in Fig. 4 below. Now do Selections | Modify | Contract 6 and save this as well to an alpha channel.

Fig. 4

Now go to Selections | Promote to layer. Once this is done we are ready to start our mesh. Go to Image | Effects | Weave and set it as show in Fig. 5. I set the Weave color to 101, 97, 97 and the gap color to black.

Fig. 5

I now add a little deformation to it to make the mesh look bent up. To do this go to Image | Deformations | Twirl and set is as show in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

Now add a new layer then go to Image | Effects | Cutout and set it to (Fill interior color is unchecked, Shadow color = black, Opacity = 100, Blur = 50, Horizontal/Vertical Offset = 8). I then finish it off by flattening the whole image then adding a small inner bevel to the edge which is optional. The finished effect is show below.

Mesh on Steel

PSP file used in this tutorial which also includes the gradient *grd file for import into PSP 6.

 

This page was last updated on October 12, 2001 by Joe Cilinceon