Here's a nice little tutorial to give text and other objects a gold look. I know there are a lot of tutorials out there that use special effects to reach a somewhat similar look, but this is an easy way of doing it and once you've gone through this tutorial, you never have to go through it again to get the look of gold. Is it magic?, no it's gradients and here's how you do it.

The first thing we want to do is to go to the color palette and click the black arrow on the background color the select gradient bar. That's the one right next to the check mark.

The gradient icon will replace the background color. Now click on the gradient icon to bring up the gradient palette. The window will display the currect gradient not the gold gradient you see in the window below. Click on the edit button beneath the preview window to bring up the gradient editor.

This is where we will create the gold gradient. To start, click the button labelled New.. and enter Gold Color for the name of your new gradient. In the center of the window is the Gradient work area where you will enter vallues to generate the gold colors.

In the gradient window above, you see the finished gradient. I will tell you how to get those colors. If you notice, you can see that there are 9 little boxes that look like little houses or sqaures with an arrow head above them. Each contains a location and a color value to help you achieve the final gold tint. Here what they are:

Position the mouse pointer at the far left, this is location 0. Notice the eyedropper on the larger of the two rectangles in the Custom coor line. Click the color once and in the color editor palette enter the following for Red, Green and Blue for the Current Color values. Red = 185, Green =170 and Blue = 101, see the palette below.

Repeat for the resst of the locations with the values shown below: Location             Red                   Green                Blue     9                   135                      121                   58    15                  183                      165                   89    30                  237                      234                  215    47                  135                      121                   58    65                  255                      255                  255    72                  151                      137                   64    87                  196                      184                  126   100                 185                      170                  101

Each time you are entering a new location, first click the mouse button below the gradient line to generate a new location, then slide it to the left or right until you reach each of the location numbers shown above. When you have the location, click the custom color rectangle and enter the values of Red, Green and Blue as shown.Click here to add your text.

Once you have entered all the values, the gradient should resemble the one in the editor window. If not, check each value again until it does. Then click OK. to save it. The new gradient will be displayed in the gradient preview window. You may have a linear gradient style showing. If so, click the Radial Gradient button on the lower right in the Style group. k here to add your text.

Now you're ready for the test. Open a new file let's say 600 x 300 pixels with a Black background. Select the Text tool and click in the window. Before you type any text Click the right black arrow in the Fill color under Styles and select the gradient option. Make sure you have the Gold Color with a Radial Gradient style chosen.Then click the black right arrow in the Stroke color box and select the same Gold Color gradient. This time set the Style to Linear gradient as shown. Make sure the gradient direction is as shown in the window below. Now type your text selecting a point size of 36 - 72.  Create the text as Vector andl click OK.

The Text will appear in the newly created window,  but we are not done yet. A few more steps to go. Select Layers>Convert to Raster Layer to get rid of the handles. Then Select Effects>Edges>Enhance, and Finally Select Effects>Enhance Photo>Auto Contrast Enhance ment and choose Darker for Bias, Normal for Strength and Bold for Appearance. That's it...You're done. Now each time you want a gold text effect, make sure the gradient Gold Color is selected, type your text in vector form and repeat the last 3 steps. It's easy..