Embossing and Dimension in Photoshop

For ten years I spent five hours a day drawing and shading coins for clients who needed renderings. I spent a lot of time messing around with colors and gradients and then I found a short cut…at least it was for me, the non-formally trained hacker that I am.

1. Start with a black and white image. Anything you see in black will be raised and anything in white will become recessed in this process. If you have a round coin shape as I did you want to delete the background around it. If you leave a white background the process will see it as a value and step it as if it were part of the image. It will also help you later when you want to add highlights and shadows to have a black and white image without the background. Make a copy of this black and white layer without background.

2. On this new layer you want to choose filter, stylize and emboss. A pop-up box will appear that allows you to adjust the height and amount of the embossing. Be sure to zoom in and look at the smaller elements of your item when choosing these attributes to see what you like best. In this example the type was more legible at a lower height.

3. This layer will now be shades of gray. You want to adjust these as well to get your desired effect. Image, adjustments, levels will give you a slide to fine-tune the black, white, and gray levels. The median line may be the most critical adjustment you can make. This will determine the number of hue changes between the white and black allowing for lesser or greater depth.

4. Great googly moogly you've got a big gray blob in the middle of your page. Now you're going to make it a color, choose image - adjust- hue saturation. In the pop-up box you are going to check off colorization and then play with the slides to achieve a variegated color you like.

5. Go back to the black and white layer . Choose all of the black areas. And hop back up to your variegated layer. The dodge tool is number 7 in the left column of the tools palette. Choose a brush size, shape, and edge and be sure to set the range and exposure level. I generally start with a range of mid-tones as it has the broadest scope and an exposure level that is very low, not usually more than 15%. By clicking and dragging your brush across the image you will create steaks of shine. Because the exposure level is low you will be able to create layers of shine as if the light were bouncing off of the piece.

6. Go back to the black and white layer and this time select all of the white. Jump back up to the variegated layer and change to the burn tool (in the same location as the dodge tool). Zooming in will be a huge help here. You will be able to see the levels of colors stacked together, wherever there is a dark level you can brush along the edge of it and deepen the shadow effect in a subtle way with the burn tool. This will soften the edges and blend your levels of color together. Depending on your detail this may be extremely time consuming but it's worth it.