3D Chrome Brushing Technique

What "Chrome" Really Is

Many Photoshoppers, at some point, will come across these typical chrome tutorials; and I am not trying to reinvent the wheel. Today, we shall take an in-depth look at what "chrome" is, what makes it look like what it is, and how to produce it. We shall push it a step further and map it on freeform 3D objects!

From the words of Jonbalza:

"The trick to getting a realistic-looking chrome is to remember that chrome really isn't silver/grey. Since chrome is almost totally reflective, it picks up the colors of whatever is around it."

With that in mind, let's make an environment for our chrome object to reflect. This can be simply achieved by using the Gradient Tool to drag a nice gradient on our canvas. To do this, I chose the "Chrome gradient" (nothing can be more appropriate!) and dragged it vertically.

Then, I applied a Gaussian Blur to blur the sharp edges a bit:

Next, use the Pen Tool to draw a freeform object.

Turn it into a selection by right-clicking on the canvas and choose "Make selection...". Then, fill it with a very light gray colour as the base colour. Do not deselect as we still need the selection for further shading.

Now, we need to strengthen the 3D feel of the object by defining its contours. We can do this by simply shading the places facing downwards (and therefore does not receive light from above) black.

To do this, create a new layer above the base colour layer and select the Brush Tool and use a big brush with soft edges. Using black as the colour, shade the portions of the freeform object that face downwards.

Then, turn the opacity of the black shade down to about 20-40%. Now, we need to define the edges of the object to make it stand out from the background. We create a new layer above the black shade and paint around the edges to produce this:

Now, we shall paint in the reflections of the environment. First, we shall paint in some brown shades in the bottom half of the object because the ground's brown colour is reflected.

Then, do the same for the blue shade of the sky:

As we discussed just now, chrome objects are very reflective. Therefore, even the centre of the object will reflect the environment very clearly.

To achieve this effect, we are going to paint in the two streaks of colours, like this:

You should remember to paint in the streaks according to the contour of the object, as opposed to painting a perfectly horizontal streak.

After that, we still have to brush in the specular highlight of the object. This specular highlight is a very strong reflection of the light source, so we need to paint it on the top portion of the object (since your shadows are downwards, obviously).

To do this, I created a new layer above and used a soft white brush to paint in a blob, like this:

Then, I used the Smudge Tool to drag the highlight so that it extends to the whole object. Remember, we still have to do this while following the object's contour to retain the realistic look.

The last step would be to add a layer underneath the object and paint in a light shadow. First, press CTRL + D to deselect and create a new layer underneath the object.

Then, use the Brush Tool with a big, soft brush to paint in black shades where the object touches the ground.

Here is the result of this lesson:

Using the concepts introduced above, very realistic chrome objects can be achieved through many different ways. The steps introduced in this lesson are only rough guidelines that I figured out myself to practise the concept; you can also think of different ways to do it. Good luck!