One of my favorite backgrounds to create is a brushed metal texture. You can use this for a background or any other object. So we’re going to start off by creating a new document. So to do that, just go to file and then new, and you could really make it whatever size you want. I’m going to go ahead and just develop a background. So I’m going to do it 450 as the width and then 450 as the height. And I’m going to go ahead and give it a name of brushed metal. And then for your background, go ahead and make sure that you set it to be transparent. Click OK and you’ll get your document.

First thing we want to do is we want to change the color to a basic gray. So I’m going to go ahead and change my color on the tool box, click on the color well and I’m going to use the color picker and I’m going to find a gray. You can really do whatever color of gray that you want. A lighter color of gray is of course going to give you a lighter brush metal and a darker one a darker brush metal. But you could do whichever kind of color that you want. And then click OK when you have the color that you want. You could preview it in the new box. And then select your paint bucket tool and then click anywhere on the document, and it’s got to fill it with that gray color.

So now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to add a series of filters to make this brush metal. So the first filter we’re going to add is noise. So go to filter and then noise, and then add noise. Now, as far as this goes, you don’t need to have these settings exactly like how I have them, just do them close. You’ll get a little bit off and it’s going to give you just a slightly different look. You really can’t do too many things wrong for this texture.

So I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to set it to 21. If that looks like too much noise, you could go ahead and lower it if you want. I’m going to do 18. You want to make sure that the distribution is Gaussian and you also want to check so it’s monochromatic. If it’s not monochromatic then you’re going to have some different colors in here. You really just want to have your grays and your black and your whites. Click on OK.

And now, we’re going to do a blur. So go to filter and then blur and then motion blur. And here, as far as the angle goes, you want to set it about 45 to 50, so anywhere in there is going to give you a different look. And really when you get down there between 45 and 50, not too much of a difference, so kind of look—mess around with that a little bit, see which one you like the best. I’m going to do 46 and as far as the distance, you need to pick something about 50 to 60. I’m going to go ahead and stick with 57 and then click OK.

Now, were going to add the lighting effect. So go to filter and then render and then lighting effects. And as you adjust your circle over here, you could grab a hold of the sizing handle, so you basically want to make sure that you have lightness brought to the entire box or entire shape that you’ve created. So make it wide enough where you’ve gotten in and where it’s all light. If you have some dark corners, that’s okay. That kind of gives it a neater look. You can also kind of create a little bit of a darker color to one side. So get to how you like and of course, you could change this to change the light source. I’m going to go ahead and leave it like that. You want to keep it as spotlight and then as far as intensity, you want to have it in between the middle to the full. If you get too light, it’s going to give you a little bit too much light and you can really see here, it’s really starting to look like metals. You can really just adjust this to how you want.

The focus, you want this to be completely wide. You want it to be 100% shiny and 100% metallic. Exposure, this is something that you can mess around with a little bit. The higher you go, the more light you’re going to get. I’m going to keep it in between the middle and in between over. And then ambience, you could set it positive, which is going to make it a really light brush metal or you can go negative and make it a little darker. I’m going to go just slightly on the positive side and that’s exactly the look that I’m going for. Leave your texture to none. Click OK and you’ve created a brushed metal texture.

If it doesn’t look quite right to you, then go back into the lighting effects and that’s where you can really set it to get exactly the look that you’d like to have.