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Hello, I am a nebbie at using the software and the forms so any help would be appreciated. What I am trying to do is add a Metal Shine to an image. We are a manufacturing company and so we have metal products and when I photograph them some of the surfaces are more matte and my boss wants them to look less matte and more, well shiny, bright, inviting. I'd share the specific photo but I can't so below are some links to kinda what I am talking about. Not Shiny/Duller Examples: https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1.UmraSCWBuNjy0Fhq6z6EVXa6/2pcs-High-Precision-Collet-Chuck-Set-6-35mm-8mm-Engraving-Trimming-Machine-Electric-Router-For-Machinery.jpg_640x640.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/Px8AAOSwt5hYamFT/$_35.JPG?set_id=8800005007 Shiny Fresher looking objects: https://sep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-46537691064911/dunham-22j-collet-chuck-fits-a-6-degree-spindle-10.gif http://cdn1.grizzly.com/pics/jpeg500/t/t10413-1689e8719085baf590a6b6336a998edc.jpg Not as helpful as far as examples go but I'm basically looking for editing suggestions I should try and play around with. You know the right general direction to head. Thank you so much for your help!

“Coffee Time” I’m really not very good with hand drawing (stick figures only!) so I really like the concept of vector drawing in which I can make changes after the fact and tweak to my hearts content. To learn how to use Affinity Designer (I have played with some vector stuff before in Inkscape but nothing much at all), I decided to make something look as real as I could that wouldn’t need too much raw drawing skill and I came up with “Coffee Time” : 100% created from scratch vector drawing (no brushes or pixel layers except for the use of the fx “Layer effects"). I did use a photo for reference but I didn’t do any tracing or anything. I’m really, really happy how it turned out. I tried out all sorts of things and learned a lot but it was a lot of fun :) As this is a "Learn and Share” forum, I thought I’d share exactly what I did (see the other other attached pictures). It’s not perfect and I’m a beginner, but hopefully others might be able to learn something, too Enjoy! :) My Process: 01 Create 2 sets of circle shapes to represent the top and bottom of the cup. Squish the top and the bottom with the move tool. The top circle has a smaller one on top to remove later to make a lip for the cup. I deliberately used bright colours to make the shapes easy to distinguish from each other. 02 Join the circles with the corners of a rectangle shape to form the side of the cup. 03 Shape the rectangle with the node tool. Add a handle. Clone the top circle and move it down to make the surface of the coffee. 04 Create a set of “shading shapes” to put on top of the side of the cup. These will then be given a gradient colour and transparency to give the illusion of a bumpy surface. 05 Create some circles and overlay some shading shapes . I used the the smart duplicate function to repeatedly rotate duplicates of the shading shape easily. 06 Squish the saucer with the move tool and move into place under the saucer 07 Change the colours to something closer to the final version and play with gradients and transparencies. I also blurred it to make it blend more naturally. Once I got something that looked good, I made a style of it and then applied it to the others and then hand tweaked each one. 08 Do the same to the saucer. Also added some detail (reflection of the inside of the cup and blurred it) to the coffee. 09 Add a background with a gradient. I used the noise slider to give it some texture. I also added some steam with just a hand drawn shape. 10 Add a shadow. I just duplicated the cup and saucer, blacked them out and then put them in place underneath everything and used the shear tool to project it out. I also added some fine detail on the edge of the side of the cup to add to the bumpiness illusion. Made the lip a nice shiny gold with a slightly tweaked version of the built in “metal” style. Added some self shadowing to the saucer and further deformed the circle shape it to give a more 3D look to it. 11 Added reflections and spectral highlights to the cup and saucer. Now it looks nice and shiny. For the final version, I also added some bubbles to the coffee (lots of circle shapes) and the text, converted to curves and then given a steam like style (actually the same one I used for the shading shapes!) and then each character rotated and scaled to make it look like steam from the coffee.