There are several external filters and plugins available that can create metallic effects when used with PSP. Blade Pro is the one I use but, like most of the others, it doesn't handle images like this well. This tutorial will show you how to turn the rose at left into the rose at the top of the page using only the built-in capabilities of Paint Shop Pro 6. The first step is to pick a flower to gild. You can use the one at the left or find another on the web. For best results, your flower should have a good range of shades from dark to light. We'll convert it to shades of gray before gilding it. So, right-click on the image at left and save it or find another flower picture you like and let's get started.

If you choose to use a different flower you'll need to clean up the background before you proceed. I've already done that on this white rose. Ok, open up PSP and load the flower picture. Make sure your image is at 16 million colors. Now select the background (I use a tolerance setting of 32 for this). Invert so the flower selected. Now, go to color/colorize and set both settings to 0. This will convert the flower to shades of gray like you see at right. You may want to promote the flower to it's own layer in case you want to give it a custom background. You can play with the brightness and contrast or use the color/adjust/shadow, midtone and highlight until you're happy with the range of gray shades. This one will work fine with the range it has.

Now to make it metallic. First we'll have to blur the flower using a Gausian blur setting of 1 (varies depending on image size). Don't worry about the blur; the chrome effect sharpens it somewhat and without blurring it you may not get a smooth, shiny surface. Now go to effects/chrome. The initial setting should be changed to 3 or 4 for flaws and leave the brightness at the default of 50 percent. Also check the box to use original color. Try 3 for flaws and see if you like it, then try 4. I used 3 for this tutorial image but now I think 4 looks better. In general, the setting for flaws will vary for everything you use this great effect on so don't be afraid to experiment. When you're satisfied, click ok and it's time for some color.

The settings for this color are hue;35, sat;226 and light;185. Or the HTML code is F7E17B.

There are a couple of ways to give this flower a golden color. Both will work but the results will be slightly different. The method I used was by setting my foreground color to the color at left and using flood fill with the blend mode set to "color". The other method uses color/colorize with settings of 35 for hue and 226 for saturation. If you try both you'll see that there is visible difference. Use whichever method you like best, it's your choice. Now you may want to experiment with brightness and contrast a little. I use settings of 5 for brightness and 15 for contrast. I think I did this twice before I was satisfied. There are basically no hard and fast rules for this technique, except maybe for the need to blur the image beforing applying the chrome effect. The settings for the different steps will change for every image you work with. The key is to experiment and remember, you can always undo and try again. Try chroming this flower without blurring;maybe you will like the resulting texture/artifact. Try flood-filling with the gold color before chroming;the result is a more subtle gold.

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