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?
Alright, we’re going to adjust the gold by hand to make it really stand out. Grab the
Burn Tool. Set it to a soft brush and adjust the exposure if you wish.
Now carefully go over the darkest area of the gold with your brush.
Great! Now let’s make the shiny parts even shinier. Grab the
Dodge Tool this time!
Play this by eye – go over the areas that are already lighter with Dodge.
Then I would adjust Dodge to maybe ‘Highlight’, set the brush smaller, and go over the area again to make one really bright spot.
Now that you’ve got your apple shined up, it’s time to add some texture if you so choose! Grab some gold texture – I’m using
the Stock Exchange: Gold Blur. Copy and paste it as a new layer over your image.
Now holding down
Ctrl, click the layer with the isolated apple on it. This will select that layer.
Making sure you’re actually on the gold texture layer, hit
Shift-Ctrl-I to inverse. Then press
Delete to get rid of the excess gold texture.
Set the texture layer to ‘Soft Light’.
Now grab the eraser tool and make sure it’s set to something soft.
We’re going to erase some bits of the golden texture – I’d advise giving it a quick run over the shiny spot.
And there you have it! A golden apple.
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