EMBOSS & METALLIC EFFECTS USING CHANNELS & CURVES

Open a new canvas, 500 x 500, 72 dpi, white background.  Fill with black.

Step 1:  Create a new layer, set foreground to a mid grey.  Select your shape (works best on shapes, text depends on size and density as to outcome).  This works best on a solid shape.  This example is using the maple leaf from the "nature" category in Photoshop 7. 

Step 2:  Ctrl+Click on the shape layer and open channel palette (Window/Channel).  Click on the new channel icon at the bottom of the palette and fill selection with white.  Keep selection.

Step 3:  Filter Blur/Gaussian Blur at 10, repeat at 5 and then 2. (Amount of blurring will depend on size and density of shapes/text). (Text is likely to need much less blur, say 5, 2, 1).

Step 4:  Click back on your shape layer  in the layers palette.  Go to Filter/Render/Lighting Effects and enter these settings.

Step 5:  Go to Image/Adjustments/Curves and set the curve like this.

Step 6:  Almost finished.  You may already be happy with the effect (should be looking something like this - needs a lighter background here), or you can play around in Image/Adjust/Hue and Saturation OR you can go to Image/Adjust/Color Balance and change the settings there.  +77, -21, -100 will produce a gold effect.  (It never comes out the same twice, sometimes a black background works well, at other times you might have to change it).

Luv & Light - Dreamcatcher