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I came across this very nice graphic a while back, and was wondering how they got the soft flat metal look. I'm told it's gradients and highlights, but I'm not sure exactly how they're done (my efforts didn't pan out).
Which part, the background metal plate (flat gradient and lighting effects) or the metal bars (linear gradients with a bit of sparkle brush effects for the "twinkle)?
Either way, you will still have to use lighting effects to give it the basic lighting. The knobs have drop shadow on them.
Looks like a minimum of about 7 layers, not counting type.
The key to using lighting effects for this sort of thing is to start out with a nuetral grey image. (128,128,128) Check the Channel Bevel tutorial over here for my quick take on it.
I think i can agree with using the Lighting Effect filter for this type of effect, it could prove quite useful. But at the same time, i think it can just as easily be done manually with a large soft brush and some white paint.
As mentioned, use a 50% grey for your base shapes. Then paint with white over the areas you wish to highlight. To make this easier to work through, set your Blend Mode to Softlight or Overlay first before painting on the lighting effects.
In most cases, you'd do better to construct the entire interface first before trying to "light it up" in this manner.
PS: bear in mind that your example image appears to have more than one "light source", lighting the interface. This should be an intentional effect, not an accident.
I used the default settings, and just moved the center of the light source downwards and spread it out to a more circular shape.
The different lighting Mark refers to is why I stated about 7 layers or so, each one being part of the image, and each one having its own lighting effect applied. The outer metal "bar" shapes will have a different lighting effect than the lowest gray flat metal, which will have a different effect than the higher green flat metal...etc.
I used the eyedropper to pick the color from your example. You can do this with any color, but the more "midrange" in value you can be, the better the effect.
Autizmo, I cannot quite figure out the correlation between your bevel tutorial and this effect, and the neutral gray thing is moot in this case.
Soft metal effects 
Linear Mode
