Colours for NMM

When I was trying to use NMM on my minis I had serious problems with choosing colours. I tried to mix grey, black, white and I wasn't satisfied because swords didn't look like metal, they looked like stone...I have found a simple solution. "Get a real sword and use colours that you see!" The problem is we can't see single colours(grey, black) well on that kind of items, only one metallic entirety. Recently I found another solution - use computer programme. First you got to find some sword's photo on the internet. In example:
Then you launch some graphics programme(GIMP, Corel draw, PhotoShop) and choose some areas on the sword. Then just make them bigger and blur them. You already have colours pallete for your mini's sword!
As you can see, colours number 5 and 6 are not only a mix of white and black, but also small amount of brown. That's an example of how this method is helpful. You may also experiment with blue(in example add it to the lighter parts) or completely use it instead of brown to give your metal polished, cleaner look. Naturally, looking on real item also makes it easier to decide where which tint should be painted.And one more thing - the metal surface should be contrastful but not too much. It depends on it's reflectivness - a stone has smooth shades, metal tray has sharper shades(it almost reflects surroundings) and a mirror is so contrastful that we can see us on it's surface. So, on average metal the highest highlights should be white, but avoid painting darkest parts too dark.I hope I helped. PS: I recently realised that the sword's photo isn't mine, I found it by Google and it's taken from some shop with weaponry. I don't remember it's name and I can't find it again. To the owner - thanks and don't be angry on me