Help a newbie to create some cockpit graphics :)

[Tex-Twil]

Hello,
I need some basic cockpit instruments for WW2 planes. I decided today that I should give it a try and make them myself. I'm a total newbie with Photoshop that I've used until now only for very basic tasks (resizing/cropping pictures).

Based on those 2 tutorials #1 #2 I made this graphic from scratch in some hours:





Now I'd like to ask you for some help to basically create the bezel and add some effects to make it a bit more realistic. Could you point me to some other tutorials or give me some hints ?


A friend of mind who is a graphic designer told me that I should stick to vector graphics so that I can resize them to my needs without loosing any quality and that's what I've done until now. I wonder though which are the limitation when I use only vector layers. For example, in one of the tutorial some grain was added to the numbers and tics but this makes the picture rasterized. What would be a workaround for this ?


Thanks for your help,
Tex

[inkworm]

wood grain effect can be achieved in illustrator, just a clever use of brushes, clipping masks and effects.

creating a bezel is just going to be a basic compound path with a gradient or two overlaying it.

Oh and be very careful about the bevels on your letters, don't go for the basic option.

It all really depends on what the maximum size you're likely to go up to with them.

[Tex-Twil]

hmm I did this in Photoshop. Was this a mistake ? Shall I start over with Illustrator ?

[Tex-Twil]

Could you be more explicit ? I'm not sure to understand.

thanks

[Tex-Twil]

If I could reproduce this kind of bezel, I'd be happy



Could someone help me ?

[Tex-Twil]

I managed to do this now

[BLOWHARD]

It's a STEEP learning curve but once you've figured this stuff out, you'll be WAY ahead

For that bezel above you might need two parts, one for the wider ring and another that has the rounded raised part. See if you can do that.

[Serval]

I think this tutorial might help you:
Creating 3D objects

[Tex-Twil]

I was just reading it

[Tex-Twil]

it's not finished yet but here is the current status