A sharp silver edge can make a picture seem cool to the touch. A broad, soft reflection can suggest a smoother surface. Creases can give an otherwise quiet image a brittle, crumpled character. These impressions offer another way to think about making images: begin with a material feeling you want to explore.

If that possibility interests you, it gives you a useful question to bring to a creative app: can I shape the surface until it feels right for this picture? The answer matters more when you can see the choices involved.

For this study, we took one folded abstract form through Chrome and Foil in Artfkt. The image at the top is the Chrome treatment. Below, the source and a closer comparison show how much of its character comes from the form, how much comes from reflections, and where personal taste enters the work.

A form with something to hold on to

The starting image imagines a chair built from overlapping knitted curves. Soft ridges and deep spaces give it a sculptural outline. Those folds provide the structure for a material experiment: what happens when a soft object acquires hard reflections?

An imagined upholstered chair with thick curled ribs, soft textile texture, and deep spaces between its folds.

The original starting image, before Artfkt treatments. The chair and textile texture belong to the source; Artfkt supplies the material treatment.

That structure gives us room to be experimental. A metallic version can become strange while retaining enough of the original curves to hold together. The portrait frame keeps the object readable while its surface becomes unfamiliar.

You might find a similar starting point in a photograph of knotted fabric, a drawing with broad light and dark areas, or a close view of something on your desk. Look for a shape you want to spend time with. An interesting edge often gives a material treatment more to work with than a crowded picture full of small details.

Reflections give the image a different character

In the Chrome version, bright bands trace the folds and dark channels run between them. The pale, quiet source becomes sharper and more assertive. Some edges seem stretched; others almost disappear into reflected light.

Artfkt’s Chrome treatment derives relief from the image and uses it to shape studio-style reflections. It produces a rendered image, rather than reconstructing the original subject as an editable metal object. For this kind of artwork, the useful result is the way those reflections reorganize the picture.

The sharpest version is only one possibility. In the comparison below, we kept the source, crop, relief, and light settings the same and changed Roughness.

Matching close crops of the same Chrome treatment: crisp, dark-edged reflections on the left and broader, softer silver reflections on the right.

Left: sharper reflections, with Roughness at 0.08. Right: softer reflections, at 0.60. Both are cropped from real Artfkt renders; the other settings match.

The left image has a harder rhythm of bright and dark marks. The right feels gentler, with more light spreading across each fold. Either could suit a finished piece. A stark cover might benefit from the first; a quieter abstract image might lead you toward the second.

This is a concrete reason to value adjustable effects. You can begin with the attraction of a metallic image, then decide how sharp, smooth, or reflective you want it to feel. The interesting purchase question is whether you enjoy making those decisions.

Creases can become the subject

Foil takes the same source in another direction. In this version, violet facets and pink-green highlights spread across the frame. The folds remain visible, but they share attention with a network of angular creases.

The folded form covered in violet metallic facets, with pink and green highlights and angular creases continuing into the surrounding image.

Foil introduces an irregular crease pattern and iridescent color. The treatment extends across the whole image, including the area around the folded form.

That changes the composition. The Chrome study concentrates attention on the curved form. Here, the surrounding surface becomes active too. The picture feels more like a fragment of unfamiliar packaging or a reflective object seen extremely close.

A result this busy asks for judgment. You may love the interruption, or want more quiet space around the subject. If the image will sit beside lettering, the letters need somewhere to remain readable. If the image stands alone, the creases might be exactly what you want to examine.

The Foil poster study explores the controls in detail. Here, the choice is about the role you want the material to play: a surface that supports the form, or a texture that becomes a major part of the subject.

What would you want to change next?

Before buying a tool for this kind of work, picture yourself looking at an appealing result and deciding what to do next.

  • You want the same shape with a different feeling. Changing roughness, relief, or lighting gives that curiosity somewhere to go.
  • You want to build a composition around it. Separate image and text layers let you develop a cover, poster, or personal graphic around the treated image.
  • You want to return to an unfinished choice. An editable project lets you revisit the treatment and composition later.

Those are useful reasons to consider Artfkt. They describe work you might actually want to continue. If one finished image is all you need, that is a different decision from wanting a studio in which to keep exploring surfaces.

You can also judge the range by your own taste. Do you prefer a restrained sheen, dense creases, or something much stranger? Look for examples that make you want to change a detail yourself. That impulse is a more personal test of fit than liking every image in a gallery.

A place for material experiments

The Artfkt desktop app includes the full collection library, including Holographic & Metallic. Chrome and Foil, used in this article, are part of that collection. You can adjust their material controls, combine treatments, and retain the work in editable projects. Collections are included with the app.

The free browser demo offers a useful first experience of bringing in an image, adjusting an effect, and exporting a result. Chrome and Foil are not included in that demo. For a related experiment with surface and distortion, try Fluted Glass from Refraction; it bends the image through glass-like ribs. The fluted glass tutorial builds a complete poster with it, and the digital collage tutorial explores torn and cut paper.

Try Fluted Glass with an image of your own →

Use that session to see whether you enjoy working directly with an image and its controls. Then explore the Holographic & Metallic examples to judge the material range shown here. The Artfkt desktop app requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 13 or later, or a 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 PC.

An image can suggest something you would never find as a physical object. If you want to keep choosing its edges, reflections, and creases, material experiments can give you a reason to return to the studio.

About this study

The source is an original image from our Soft Machinery artwork study, not a photograph of a manufactured chair. Artfkt supplied the actual Chrome and Foil treatments at 1200 × 1600 with animation off and time zero. The roughness comparison uses matching native detail areas; only Roughness changes from 0.08 to 0.60. These are digital surface treatments, not a physical print finish or a reconstructed 3D object.