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I'm intending to recreate a square shiny gold plate. I've found in this video but I couldn't reproduce it as I don't know how to work with multiple gradients.

Does it exist a better guide on how to do it?. I've intended to use gradient tool in fill options in a square plate but the only thing which I got was a simple gradient whose background color was white, can someone help me with this?.

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  • Hi. Welcome to GDSE. You can use the gradient tool to add stops to make any gradient you want. Maybe have a look at this tutorial on youtube which shows how to make more complex gradients.
    – Billy Kerr
    Aug 30, 2020 at 10:27
  • Your question is very akin to this question, maybe you can try Inkscape filters like Glowing Metal and similar. Aug 31, 2020 at 11:08

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Hopefully you have done as already suggested by user Billy Kerr and learned how to make more complex gradients than one color to transparency.

What is a gold gradient? It's a cliche. One picks to a gradient colors which can occur in a photo taken from golden objects in an environment which doesn't add too much other colors. Polished gold reflects well like a mirror with yellowish cast so keeping the scene golden there cannot be much other colors reflected from the gold.

The next image has a photo of gold bars and a rectangle filled with 6 stop gradient, all stop colors are picked from the photo:

enter image description here

The rectangle doesn't look flat, it's like a piece of cylinder in an environment where the light is a mixture of white light and reflections from gold. Actually there's no other information available of the surface curvature. The impression "it's cylindrical" is only a result of numerous seen images which have had somehow resembling shading and we knew they were cylindrical.

The white highlight is an error. The photo is adjusted so that the brightest area would need brighter yellow than our RGB color system can make. It's clipped to white 255,255,255. People who adjust photos do often the same because it makes more contrast possible. The price is whitening the brightest colors.

The next image is a theoretical palette how different greyscale colors behave when the get successively reflected from gold:

enter image description here

The top line is pure white reflected 0...8 times from pure gold. The next lines are dimmer greys with same reflections.

Remember: Pure white in an image of gold is an error caused by the limitations of our RGB system. Dimmer greys on gold (except black) are impossible. Black = no light.

If you want to draw a flat rectangle with gold gradient the color differences cannot be wide. In the next image the start and stop colors are adjacent in the previous table:

enter image description here

It doesn't look polished. It's matt or the environment is featureless. A realistic polished flat surface in realistic environment could look for ex. like this:

enter image description here

If you are going to draw something more complex which should seem to be gold you are not aiming especially little. See this old case:

Illustrator: How to create realistic reflective gold surface?

There few of us have tried to draw some gold ingots with different methods. Also 3D models are shown. I must admit that rendering a 3D model does it much easier if any realism is expected.

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  • Interesting so in short terms the effect can be achieved by only playing with stop gradients?. As it is mentioned the illusion which I attempted to recreate was as it depicted on the video, which I believe it is made possible by using gradients, is this part am I getting right?. Can you add the steps of how did you made the mate plate over the picture which shown a polished gold picture displaying a photo cameraman?. Sep 1, 2020 at 22:47
  • Not playing with stop gradients, but playing with gradient stops!!! In your linked video there's another cliche: Reflected sky and reflected ground on a little curved surface. It's actually "the making easily chrome-trick" it's only yellow and brown for gold. Chreme needs whire, greys and black. Mate over picture is a cropped photo. It has blending mode multiply so it blends with the underlying gold plate. The small reflection in the lens is a scaled copy and partially transparent to make it dimmer. It's actually bulged a little in a photo editor to make it appear to be on a curved lens.
    – user82991
    Sep 1, 2020 at 23:02
  • Sorry about the name what I mean was this So in short to make the mirror effect was made possible by combining the cameraman over the mate gold plate with blending mode multiply and as you mentioned the small camera in the reflexion is just a scaled copy?. Am I understanding you right?. Sep 2, 2020 at 14:40
  • The plate in this case is flat and does not has any bents or waves, how can this be achieved?. Will it be adding a picture which has waves or bents?. Sep 2, 2020 at 14:42
  • The colors which you had picked to make the gold plate were obtained from the theoretical palette so what colors did you used?. Just only from 0 to 8 in the first row?. Sep 2, 2020 at 14:46

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