In this short Step-By-Step-Tutorial-For-Idiots i will show you how to do that steel thing up there. To accomplish this, you will need Photoshop (4.0 or newer) and plug-in package called Eye Candy. So, lets get started shall we ?

 

Create new image , 525 width and 125 height and paint the background black. Create new channel and go to that channel.

With the 'Polygonal Lasso Tool' draw a selection like this:

(note,you can hold 'shift' down while dragging, it creates straight line)

Working in the channel, paint the selection 100% white :

Add 'Gaussian Blur' , the radius depends on how round you want the corners to be. i used '5' :

Now hit CTRL-L to get to the 'Levels'. Input levels : 124 1,00 139 . this is used to smooth the shape we have and create the selection.

now the selection should look something like this:

Now go back to "normal mode" (or the RGB channel if you like) and load the selection (the alpha channel you were working in)

Using airbrush, draw some shadows and highlights (sorry bout the crappy pic, damn pain shop pro did something ..) :

With Eye Candy's 'HSB Noise' filter, add this kind of effect:

with these settings

Then use Eye Candy's 'Inner Bevel' to the selection with these settings:

then, in quickmask mode, do a random selection like this, doesnt' matter what it looks like, just make sure its on top of the metal:

(you can change the color of the mask by doubleclicking the 'quickmask' button)

that button or key Q changes to Quickmask mode

Then, add HSB noise again with the same settings as before but height= 0 pixels.

here is the final one. (again pain shop pro did something for the colors..)

There ya go. Hope this helped ya.