PART ONE: Over the past several months the most popular question posed to Letters@ have been related to creating chrome or polished metals like silver and brass. These inquiries have been so inspiring that we have now pulled together several "chrome" articles that we've published over the years for our online readers. Chrome? In reality the most important aspect of creating chrome is not in the drawing of it but more the ability to see it. Many people now utilize various tutorials in books or online that walk you through techniques with no regards to what it is you're actually painting. I've seen dozens of "...here's my tip for chrome" websites where the artist drew something - it looked like chrome - so they called it chrome. ... Then there are the hoards of PS users reading the how-to books. Many claim to, but few deliver. ... In The Photoshop 4 Bible, Deke McClelland skirts around the issue altogether yet agrees that "...filters turn an image into a melted pile of metallic goo... I've never been satisfied with the results." (in reference to the Chrome filter in v4.) Then he goes ahead and tells you how to do it with "find edges" effect and proceeds to completely miss the point again. His section on the "Curves" function, however, is the best in the industry (pages 698 through 706) and provided me with the knowhow to bring off the chrome effects you'll see in the second part of our series "Chrome Layers, Levels & Curves" article. ... Since the "Chrome" article became so large, it has been split it into several parts. Today's PART ONE talks about actually "seeing" the visual nuances of any polished surface. In PART TWO: "Tubular Chrome" we'll give you a step-by-step walk through drawing chrome from scratch using your head. Then in PART THREE "Chrome Layers, Levels & Curves" we'll walk you through the process of using built-in Photoshop functions to simulate chrome, soft aluminum, and brass just like we did in our header above. ... Another related article is posted in our new &FOTOgraphic wing. "Photo Shoots" where we deal with photographing various objects, including one situation where we met the challenge of building 'perfect' reflections into shots of chrome. Let's talk about metallic surfaces and polished objects. See first. Then paint.