Okay, so yesterday I was messing around, trying to find some cool images, right? I had this idea for a project, and it needed that shiny, classy look – you know, like white gold. So, I started hunting for “white gold images”.
First thing I did, I just googled it. Obvious, right? Scrolled through pages and pages of stock photos. Lots of jewelry, some textures, but nothing that really grabbed me. Everything looked too…stocky. Too perfect. I needed something with a bit more grit, a bit more personality.
Then I remembered Vecteezy. I’ve used them before for vectors, but totally forgot they also have photos. So, I hopped over there and typed in “white gold”. Immediately, I saw some better stuff. More variety. Found a couple of images of white gold rings that were pretty sweet. Downloaded a few to play with.
But here’s the thing, I’m a bit of a control freak. I wanted something specific. So, I decided, “Screw it, I’ll try to make my own.” I fired up Blender (yeah, I know, overkill for just an image, but I like Blender).
Spent a good hour messing with materials. Trying to get that white gold sheen just right. Metallic roughness, a touch of subsurface scattering, all that jazz. Rendered out a few test images. They looked…okay. But still not quite what I wanted.
Frustrated, I went back to those stock photos I downloaded. Started messing with them in Photoshop. Added some grain, tweaked the colors, played with the lighting. Layered a few different images together, blended them, masked them. You know, the usual Photoshop shenanigans.
And you know what? After about two hours of tweaking, I finally got something I was happy with. It wasn’t perfect, but it had that rough-around-the-edges, classy vibe I was going for. Learned a bit about materials in Blender, brushed up on my Photoshop skills, and ended up with a white gold image that’s actually pretty cool. Win-win, I guess.
