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:



2. Lighting Effects
In this step we are going to turn our gradient interface into a shining metal-ish interface.
Create a new layer. Name it metal_shine. Click on the metal_interface while holding CTRL.

Set the foreground color to White. Grab the gradient tool, Set the gradient mode to
Foreground to Transparent. Now click on the actual gradient to edit it.
Drag the arrow called 'Opacity Stop' (all on the left) to the middle. Drag the second opacity
stop (all on the right) to the very left of the gradient. Then click on the very right to make a third
opacity stop appear. Your gradient should now look like this:



Back to our selection, drag the gradient tool from about 20% from the left until 80% from the left.
An image on how to drag the gradient:



Set the layer metal_shine's blending mode to Overlay.
You should now have a shiny, metal-ish looking interface like this:



If you are satisfied with the result as it is above, skip the next step.

3. Making the Rust
In this step we will be applying a rusty kind of effect onto our shiny, metal-ish interface.
We will use this grunge brush for the rust brushing.

Create a new layer, above the metal_interface layer but below the metal_shine layer. Name it
metal_rust. Load the brush set (I assume you know how to load a brush set) and brush away.
Set the layer's opacity level to 15%. To cut off all brushing that is outside the interface, CTRL+Click the
metal_interface layer to select it, right-click and click Select inverse to select everything
outside it. Simply press delete to delete. You should now have something like this:



We will now apply a rusty, bronze color over our interface, so that it looks old and really rusted.
On the metal_rust layer, click Layer->New Adjustment Layer->Color Balance
Apply the following color balance settings:



Click the color balance layer. Make a selection like below on both the top and the down sides and press
Delete. This is needed to restore the background layer's color.



Done :) I hope you enjoyed reading my tutorial and actually learnt something about making rusted metal or
shiny metal inteface. My result from this tutorial:



More tutorials coming soon! ;)