What if everything you touched turned to gold?

Now you can have that power - without the donkey ears.

This is a tutorial on turning objects into gold with Photoshop. I find this works better on smooth, shiny, or artificial items - although this can be applied to living things the effect is not as convincing.

This tutorial was suggested by Mizaks, owner of The Critical Critics.

First, get an image that contains and object you would like to turn into gold. King Midas, who had the Golden Touch, was dismayed to find that although he was now rich beyond his wildest dreams, he was unable to eat. All of his food turned to gold when it touched his lips. So, let’s make some golden foodstuffs. I’ve used a stack of apples.

You can download this image from The Stock Exchange: A is for Apple

Now we have to select the object we want to turn into gold. Since the apple is quite round, I’m going to use the Pen Tool, and then change the path into a selection. You can extract your object in a different way - perhaps with the Extraction Filter or the Polygonal Lasso Tool.

If you are using the Pen Tool, make sure you have Create New Work Path selected.

I want to turn the topmost apple gold, so I’ve drawn a path around the edges of that apple.

Now select Paths in the Layers Window, right-click your workpath and hit Make Selection.

Now copy your selection (which should be housing that one apple) onto a new layer.

Now we’re going to add the GOLDEN TOUCH. With your new apple layer selected, choose Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation…

Tick off Colorize. Set Hue to something between 40 - 50, and Saturation to 70. Depending on your image, you may have to play around with these values a bit.

This is what it looks like so far. Pretty golden, right?

For a more convincing effect, we’re going to adjust this a little more by hand. Head on over to the next page to learn how to really make this shine!

Pages: 1 2

Similar Posts

• Decorate your Tree with Baubles!
• Harry Potter Movie Font - Bronze, Silver, and Gold Text Tutorial
• Liquify Filter - Pt. 2
• Mask Your Photos to Make Curved Edges (+ Other Strange Shapes!)
• Dead Easy Complex Geometric Shapes