drawing hydraulic cylinder

I'm trying to create a simple drawing of a hydraulic cylinder and every attempt I've made so far looks terrible. I've tried using the pen tool and the render 3D filter, which has been okay, but I really haven't had much luck. Does anyone have a suggestion to help point me in the right direction on how to draw an object like this? Perhaps a tutorial that walks through some methods to achieve something similar? I'm still a novice with Photoshop, so my skills are not very proficient in this area. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
-D-

Creating realistic 3-D images in Photoshop is quite advanced. It's not a 3-D rendering software. Not to say that it's impossible - nothing is impossible in Photoshop - it's just hard to do.

dwayne: just create the outline and use a gradient fill. It will work quite nicely if you are looking for something simple.

I never try "drawing" anything in Photoshop. It is a photo manipulation tool. If I want to draw something, I use Adobe Illustator, a drawing tool. Then I bring it into Photoshop (if necessary).

This site has a few photoshop tutorials that may help:
http://www.myjanee.com/ps.htm
You can also do a search on google for the same.

You can get trueSpace 3.2 for free.
Sounds perfect for this kind of thing.
Also good for other 3d things.
And it's not that hard to learn. At least I didn't have trouble figuring it out.

<http://forms.caligari.com/forms/ts3all_free.html>

cool. thanks stroker.

dwayne,

I don't know how realistic you want your drawing to be, but you can achieve pretty good results using nothing but the rectangle tool and gradient fills.

<http://www.pbase.com/image/20055949>

Every element (cylinder, caps, rods, nuts, etc) is on its own layer. Every element was made with the rectangle marquee tool. Whenever an element is duplicated (4 nuts, 2 rods, 2 caps) I just duplicated the original layer and maybe gave it a different fill.

The only thing that I did differently is the highlight (again on it's own layer). That was a brush set to 50%, white color, overlay mode.

Total time: 30 minutes. Hey, I just got out of bed, OK?

Cool Dwayne. Now try it from perspective ... so that you are looking at it from an angle ... that's why I would rather do it in AI.

Thanks for the help. It has helped me out a great deal! I really appreciate it:) -D-

Dwayne, I draw in PS all the time. Just try to break your hydraulic cylinder into basic shapes. Here are some tutorials which may be handy.

<http://www.planetphotoshop.com/spivey41.html>

< http://photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/segmented%20pipes/segment ed%20pipes.htm>

They show how to make cylindrical joints and add a metal effect. If you want a more "3D" look, draw ellipses at the end of your rectangles to give them a sense of perspective. If you need to show hydraulic fluid make your cylinder using a color like light blue. Then you can set the transparency slider in the layers palette to 40% or so to make it look like water.

Have fun, everyone was a novice once.

Re #4: Don, how did you get to be an "Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop" with an attitude like that?

ID

I wrote the test and scored over 72% (the pass mark at the time).

And I don't think Adobe would consider it a bad attitude ... using another of their programs when it is better suited to the task. It isn't like I use (shudder) Freehand or something.

Don: I obviously disagree with Illutrator being better suited, I found Photoshop ideal for that type of work.

Piker: 94%. THH.

To each his own. I find most people prefer the program they are most comfortable in. I have used AI since 1.0 and Photoshop only since 3.0. So for a long time I would do things in AI that should have been done in PS.

Once one really learns how the pen tool works in AI, you can do incredible things with it that put PS to shame (in drawing). But PS is indespensible because it does so much AI can't.

I couldn't live without both, but if I had to choose, I probably would take PS. Luckily, I don't have to.

Well my background is the same: Ill 1, PS 3, CD 4, fortunately I would choose Corel over Illustrator anyday, its bezier tools are far superior to Illustrator.

I use both, but for this particular instance, Photoshop wins as HO so aptly illustrated.