How to Chrome Plate your Cherries By briansteenstry
Chrome is tough... It doesn't really have any properties other than reflectiveness, which makes it a real challenge to represent in a photographic image. It's mostly about the reflections, and I will attempt to show how I got the reflections dialed in for the Chrome Cherry entry. I have divided the process into 7 steps on the following pages. I am not going into great detail about selecting and masking, assuming everyone who reads this is an old pro at that stuff. (Skip to the end if all you want is a screenshot of the layers pallete : )
Re-layering the source
This is the original source for the cherries. Note that the left cherry is in front of both the leaf to its left and the other cherry to its right. In order to have it reflecting both of these, I had to put it *behind* both. This part is easy. Just select a similar piece of the leaf to the left (where it is unobstructed by the cherry) and paste that in front of the spot where the leaf covers the cherry. The same technique can be used to cover the right edge of the left cherry where it is tucked behind the other cherry. This is subtle, as it is just a sliver of leaf covering the edge, but it is hugely important since nothing can reflect something that is behind it!