11.16
In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to build a Web 2.0 style button. This technique creates the glossy buttons that are becoming more widely used.
I am going to start with a 400px by 150px canvas.
Use the rounded rectangle tool, with a radius between 10 and 20. I am using 20 in this example.
Draw your rectangle, taking up most of the canvas. Color does not matter at this point.
This will give you a shape layer. Rasterize the shape layer.
Now, on the layer that your rectangle is on, go to blending options.
Choose Inner Shadow. Here I set the angle to 130 degrees, opacity to 45%, distance to 5 and size to 6.
Also in blending options, choose gradient overlay. This is where you are going to lay the color on to your button. Here I used the defaults, except the color.
Now use your magic wand tool to highlight the rounded rectangle you created.
Go to Select>Modify and choose Contract. Choose between 4 and 6 pixels, I am using 6 for this example.
Now create a new layer, and add a white to transparent gradient to your selected area.
Choose your Elliptical Marquee Tool.
Holding alt, drag your elliptical over the top half of the selected area.
Now, delete the remaining selected area of this layer.
At this point you can play with the opacity slider some to get a blend that looks good. I am going to leave this one along however, as it looks pretty close.
Lastly, after adding a font and resizing you have:
