Help creating a yellow brick road.

New here and a newbie at PS. I'm working on an idea, without much luck achieving the desired effect. I would like to create a path that looks like it's made of golden bricks. Here's a link to give you an idea of what I'm trying to achieve.

http://www.geocities.com/topcaddy69/pics/testimg.gif

This is my first attempt and I don't like how it's turning out. I want the brick pattern to tighten as it moves down the path(a realistic look of depth). And I'd like the path to look more like real gold. Any ideas or tutorial links for this would help! Thanx, in advance!

real gold

- well think about gold. What color is it? Or is it a color? In my opinion..... its more a reflection based color. Like chrome. The trick to good chrome is the base color is the darkest (usually black) and the white highlights define the chrome. So with gold........i would have a base color of dark orange/red or brown...then use variartions of orange/red/yellow/white (or any one of them) to make the highlights.

How do u do this? well.......change the yellow you have to one of the "darker" colors above, and either with a small paint brush (if your comfortable with drawing by hand) to paint the reflections/highlight in....or use a photograph. Destaturate the photo(s), bring up the contrast and use colordoge/overlay/hardlight to make the highlights. Also if you use a photo....bring down the opacity of that layer (maybe 20-50 %) so the reflections are somewhat softer.

(a realistic look of depth)

You probably with have to use edit>Transform>Perspective and scale the edge farthest away. Which would also help with the brick pattern you have now. Notice how the lines in the bricks arent quite on the same plane as the land. The perspective would help line it up.

Ok, the easiest way I've found to do what you want to do, is to make a new layer and fill it with gray. then go to your Channels pallet, and make a new alpha channel. Fill that with the brick pattern that was included with photoshop, (should be under Photoshop>textures for lighting effects>bricks or something like that) open the texture and define it as a pattern (Edit>define Pattern) then use the paint bucket tool set to pattern fill of go to edit>fill and set it to fill with the brick pattern.

go back to your layers pallet and click on the grey layer and go to filters>render>lighting effects. set the displacement at the bottom of the dialog box to alpha 1 (the bricks you just made) and the height to 100.

you should now have a relatively realistic embosed brick pattern. next go to image>adjustments>curves and make a curve in the dialog that has two or three sharp humps with sharp valleys (I wish I could explain this better but you really have to see it, check the net for a chrome text effect they almost always use this type of curve.)

Next free transform the bricks so that the top two transform handles are pulled in to a vanishing point, press enter/return. you can now shear the road to make it curve off into the distance, but you don't have to, I just think it makes it look better. bring back up the free transform and grab the top center control handle and bring it down to your horizion line.

Add a little blur to the road in the distance, you can use the gaussian blur on a duplicate of the road layer and then mask it to the layer below, merge these two layers. Then add a color overlay in the layerstyles dialog box and pick a nice yellow gold color.


Did this make any sence at all? I think I might have completely confused you. If you have any questions please email me at: [email]cryptomaniac68@hotmail.com[/email]


Good luck.

Thanx Rodder, the gold does look too flat and too yellow and Maniac, thankyou too!
I will give both of these a try, if I can figure them out. Might take me alittle time, but I think I can handle it. If I get stuck, I'll let yall know. Thanx again!