Pixel2Life

Making Rusted Metal Interface
This tutorial will teach you how to create pretty rusted metal interface.
We will use simple lighting techniques, brushes and adjustment layers to get the desired effect.
If you prefer shiny, bronze or silver metal interfaces over grungey, rusted ones, skip the last step.

Table of Content:
1. Our Basic Interface
2. Lighting Effects
3. Making the Rust

1. Our Basic Interface
Create a new document. Size does not really matter, mine was 500x200 but yours can be different.
Fill the background layer with a dark, almost black color. I used #343434.

Create a new layer. Name it 'metal_interface'. This layer will hold the metal interface.
We will now draw a rectangular shape with the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Mine was
500x45, but yours can be different. Set the foreground color to #4b4b4b and the
background color to #727272. We will now draw a gradient interface.

Grab the Gradient Tool and draw from the top of your selection all the way to the bottom.
(Gradient mode: Foreground to Background. Gradient: Linear)
You should now have something similar to this:



Next thing to do is add edges to our gradient interface. Zoom until the zoom level is 150%.
At the top of the gradient interface, draw a rectangular marquee about 4px high and full width.
Grab your Gradient Tool again and drag it from the top of the selection until the bottom
(same settings as last time) Kinda like this:



Do the same at the bottom of the interface. This way they look like borders with depth.
If you did everything like I told you above, you should now have something like this: