Scanning Metallic Colors

[Enzo Fiorello]

We're working from Windows XP on a PC ... Photoshop 6.0 ... We are scanning "shiny" gold and silver pieces of stationery on an Epson GT 10000 scanner ... and they turn out really dark ... Is there a way in Photoshop to achieve that "metallic" look? Any help would be appreciated! Thanx!

[Thee_DarkOverLord]

will you be printing to metalic inks? or just cmyk, is it just for web?

[Thomas Geist]

For scanning brushed aluminum and steel I had very good results, when I turned up the mid tones in Levels a very healthy amount.
The dullness was gone and it looked very nice.

Another solution would be to light the objects right and then take shots with a digital camera - if this is possible. You have much more control over the lighting, which is critical for metallic stuff.

[Enzo Fiorello]

These images are just for the web ... these have already been scanned ... Any tricks in Photoshop?

[Anguished_Oink]

You could play around with the reflected gradient combined with
hue/saturation (desaturate for grey/ colourize for colour(gold)), for a
brushed metal add decent noise and motion blur it to your liking.
Thomas made a good call with shooting the stationery with a camera, I would
go with that if poss?.

"Enzo Fiorello" <enzo@finestationery.com> wrote in message
news:1dea289e.-1@WebX.la2eafNXanI...

> We're working from Windows XP on a PC ... Photoshop 6.0 ... We are

scanning "shiny" gold and silver pieces of stationery on an Epson GT 10000
scanner ... and they turn out really dark ... Is there a way in Photoshop to
achieve that "metallic" look? Any help would be appreciated! Thanx!

[YrbkMgr]

We have the same scanner, so I presume that you are using Epson Twain Pro Software.

The best thing to do, is to do your scan in two passes: one set of parameters for the entire image except the metal, and the other for only the metal.

In the twain software, you usually have to bring exposure up to about three, Gamma to about 1.85, and black to about 35. Your mileage will vary, but my point is to use the preview window and the settings in the twain software to get the look you are after.

If you are only trying to "fix" images that have already been scanned, then you have to "fake" the metallic colors. If it's gold, do a google search on "Gold Foil Photoshop" and you should get some interesting results.

See this thread for more info:

hot_denim "Simulating Gold Foil – need some tips" 4/19/03 1:34am </cgi-bin/webx?14@@.1de8ca75/0>

And especially this post:

Susan S. "Simulating Gold Foil – need some tips" 4/20/03 12:33am </cgi-bin/webx?14@@.1de8ca75/15>

Peace,
Tony