This tutorial will teach you to create your own buttons in a modern, clean web2.0 style. The final result can be seen below.
Too lazy to do this yourself? Check out our freebies section. You can download the psd with not one but a lot of buttons here.
Step 1
Start off with a 500 x 500 canvas (or similar, doesn’t really matter) with a black background. Create a new layer ( ⌘ + shift + N or ctrl + shift + N )
Using the rounded rectangle tool(hotkey U), create a button shape. By clicking on the shape in the layers window pick another color. I will go with orange in this example.
The next thing we need to do is add a glossy effect on the middle of our button. In order to do this you use the Marquee Tool (hotkey M) and make a selection on the upper half of your button. Create a new layer and select it.
After this we need to fill this selection with white. Use Edit > Fill to do this. With your layer selected lower your opacity until the entire thing looks like a glossy reflection(40-50%-ish should be ok).
Now to make the excess white disappear right-click the layer that contains the white gloss, making sure it’s right over your shape, and select clipping mask.
It should now look like this:
Step 2
In this phase we will add a nice irregular feel to our button. To do this you need to create a new layer and select it. Then do a layer content selection ( ⌘ + click or ctrl + click on the layer you want to select) on the layer that contains our basic button shape. The result will be a selection with the shape of our button that is active in our new layer. Use the gradient tool (hotkey G, if you can’t see it, click the bucket tool) select a radial gradient and use the settings below(radial gradient is the one looking like a circle,second one on the right, up under the menu).
Then click the gradient in the menu to configure it’s looks. What we need is a yellow color fading to a transparent white. So set your left color to yellow with a opacity of 100% and on the right side white with an opacity of 0%.
Apply the gradient in the upper left corner of the selection until it’s uneven. Then set the entire layer to Overlay. Your button should now look good.
Step 3
Add some text on the center of the button. Choose a nice sans-serif font like Verdana or Helvetica Neue or browse for some new ones over at http://www.dafont.com.
Then select layer contents on our button shape, create a new layer above everything else and go to Edit > Stroke using the following settings: 1px, inside opacity 50-60%.
You are done! Voila.
