Simple "Chrome" Look in Photoshop
This is a short guide on a neat little trick using photoshop to make a chrome looking element. It's great for nav and menu bars and can be modified to create lots of unique looks.
Index of Contents
»Photoshop
»One Gradient is all it Takes
Photoshop
This guide assumes you're using Photoshop (any version will do) and know how to use it. I use version CS3. You should also be able to adapt this guide to various other image editing or painting programs, as long as you can use gradients.
One Gradient is all it Takes
Create a new document in Photoshop with large enough dimensions to work with. Then create a new layer, and using the marquee tool create a rectangle, then fill it with a color. You should have something like this (click to see full screen in new window):
Now go to the layer style and click on Gradient Overlay (to find the layer style window, highlight the layer and look in the bottom left of the layers window). Now by default the gradient should have a black color on one end and a white color on the other. You're going to insert two more colors into the color picker bar, one at 47% location and the other at 53% location. You should be here:
Now to give it that chrome look, adjust the colors so that the color at 47% location is fairly dark, and the color at 53% is fairly light, contrasting well with the color at 47%. Then adjust the color at 0% location to a little lighter than the one at 47%, but still fairly dark. For the color at 100% location, choose something light but maybe a little darker than the color at 53%. This may sound a bit awkward, so view this picture to get a better idea:
There are a million variations on this "chrome" look, so experiment by moving and changing colors around.