Have you tried applying a bevel effect to the text before applying the chrome effect
ie  place text, leave it selected
choose effects|inner bevel
use the following settings but you can change to achieve your desired effect

width 5, ambience 20, smoothness, 0, depth 20, ambience 0, shininess 0, angle 315, intensity 50, elevation, 50.

I also have some info at home which involves copying the original and pasting as a new layer then applying effects to create 3d effects which I will post later
In the meantime hope this helps

It's not a lie if you believe it!

http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/
http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/Ian/
http://www.ne4x4.fsnet.co.uk/beck/

I don't know if the bevel would give the effect I'm looking for, but I'll give it a go.  The info you said you'll post later sounds more like what I'm after

Well, thanks again for your post.  i'll try out the bevel effect tonight.

1)Create a new 16m image with transparent backgroud Place your text (it will be best to do each letter separately)then export your text as a picture tube
File|Export|Picture Tube
use all of the default settings except for  the step size (change that to 1) then give your tube a name and save it, once you have done this you save this as a psp image.
2)OPen a new window 16m colous. Chose the picture tube tool from the tool pallete and select your saved tube from the dropdown box make sure the scale is set to 100 and step to 1.
3) In your new empty window create a new lay (layers|new) accept all the default properties. On this new layer left click once to put down a copy of your text tube put it towaards the upper left corner rather than centred and make sure none of the tube is lost outside the boundaries of the window.(make a note of where you clicked to place the tube!
4) Hold down yur Shift key and position your cursor a little bit down and to the right of where you clicked last time (approx 3-5 pixels away in each direction). By holding down the shif key you have placed a line of tubes between the two click points spaced 1 pixel apart.
5) Reopen you original text imageuse the selection tool to draw around the text. Be sure that the Antialias box is checked and Feather is set to 0
6)set your foreground colour to white and backround colour to dark grey. In the style pallete set the foreground style Gradient. In the gradient style set Horizontal and vertical offsets to 50 and the repeats to 3 make sure the Invert Gradient box is unchecked.
7) Use the flood fill tool to fill your image selection then copy your selection Edit|Copy
8) Return to the window where you laid down the picture tubes and create a new layer above the ones already there then Edit|Paste|As New Selection and position the selection over the existing image
9) Turn off visibility for the white background layer then Layers|Merge|Visible Copy the image and paste it into another image or save it as a picture tube.

I know this seems complicated but its easier to do than describe but should give your text a nice 3d effect
regards
Ian

It's not a lie if you believe it!

http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/
http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/Ian/
http://www.ne4x4.fsnet.co.uk/beck/

If what ne4x4 posted doen't do the trick, can you post a url to an example of what you are talking about?

mike

I'm going to try out ne4x4's suggestion, over the weekend.  I'm trying to achieve something similar to what's at http://www.laserlines.com - go into the enhanced site, there's a circular "thing", I'd like the lettering to be something similar.  I'll post back on monday and let you both know how I get on

Well, thank you both for all your help.  I've learnt alot over the past few days.

Thanks again
Martin

The example on the laserlines site should be acheivable with the above posting albeit you may have to  alter colours and shading a bit, but let me know how you get on
Regards
Ian

It's not a lie if you believe it!

http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/
http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/Ian/
http://www.ne4x4.fsnet.co.uk/beck/

ne4x4, I tried out your tutorial last night.  I have one question:  in #6 you said
6)set your foreground colour to white and backround colour to dark grey. In the style pallete set the foreground style Gradient.

When you set the forground color and background color, don't you do this on the style pallett? so how can you then set it to gradient also?  I'm kind of confused on that bit.  other than that, I understand everything else, and it looks like it'll give me the effect I'm after

I really do appreciate all the help you and mThomas have given me.
thanks

BY setting the foreground and backgroud colours prior to choosing the gradient option makes them the foreground and background colours for the gradient.
Hope this makes it clearer
Regards
Ian

It's not a lie if you believe it!

http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/
http://www.ne4x4.org.uk/Ian/
http://www.ne4x4.fsnet.co.uk/beck/