Let's begin by opening an new image measuring 150 pt square with a white background. I'm going to start with the letter "g" (which you will all be very tired of by the end of this tutorial!) with font Garamond set at a size of 200 pt with strong aliasing. Now, I went ahead and set the font color at #CC9933 since I knew ahead of time that it was the color I would predominantly use for this effect.

Okay, now go to Layer>Layer Style or click on the icon on the Layers palette. Go to Bevel and Emboss and click to open the Layer Style palette. Set it for an Inner Bevel with a technique of Chisel Hard. Set the rest of your figures close to the example set in Figure 2.

Figure 2

This should be a close representation of your image so far. As you can see, instead of opting for a more rounded bevel, I selected a more chiseled plateau bevel. It always comes down to detail for me and I wanted to make the letter look less molten and more like a gold bar.

While I like the bevel shape, I'm not entirely happy with the lighting, so I go down to the Shading feature on the same palette and adjust the contour to the preset "Cove - Deep."

Figure 4

Here we can see the difference in the shading. The image is a bit darker, but also has stronger highlights.

While this is more pleasing to me, I know that gold, in it's natural state, is not as smooth featured. To correct this, I click on Texture within the tree created under the Bevel and Emboss feature. For the texture, I select the preset "Rough" and leave the basic setting at their default.

Ah, yes! The image is looking much more golden now. My only concern now is that the highlighted areas seem to be bleeding into the background.

So, I click on Stroke and set the outside edge to 1 pt. For it's color, I choose a color that is kin to my original font color. In this case, I pick a brown color, #7D4900. A black may also have worked considering what color of background I am going to be placing this image on later.

With the Opacity set at 60% to avoid a hard-edged outline, I apply the stroke to my Layer. The outline now blends into the darker edges of the image, while making the highlights "pop-out" from the current background.

Now, for the final image, I add a drop shadow and create a background from a kin color. Voilà! I have created gold in only a few minutes!

Experiment with different styles and text and feel free to send me a copy of your .gif or .jpg.

If, while using your Layer Styles palette, you create an effect that you would like to use over and over again, click on the New Style button located at the right of the palette. Your style icon will be placed on the Styles menu located on the main Photoshop desktop.

With a single click, you can add your new style to any layer you wish!