Creating a glass button

Make a glass looking button. This is a similar style to the Windows Vista Task bar.

Level: Intermediate

Photoshop Version: CS2 (Can be done in Earlier versions up to Photoshop CS)

How to:

First create a blank photoshop document using these settings: Width: 4 inches, Height: 1 inch, DPI: 300.


Select the rounded rectangle tool as shown here:

Draw a rounded rectangle in a similar fashion to this. I used a Corner Radius of .125 in. You can change the radius as you like. More radius makes the corner more rounded, less radius makes the corner sharper.

Change the foreground color to white and draw another rounded rectangle as you see here. You can change the radius for this as well. To make a more glossy look, decrease the radius, to make a duller shine, increase the radius. You can make many different variations of glass buttons using this technique. There are many other techniques as well for creating glass buttons. This is one of them.


Next, change the opacity of the white rectangle you just made to 17 percent. You can adjust the percentage as you would like. The higher the percent the more you give the feeling of a strong light pointing at the button, the less the percent, it gives the appearance of a dull light.


Next, select the Elliptical Marquee Tool.

Using the Elliptical Marquee tool, make a shape similar to this and fill it with a color you desire. Experiment with different colors, to get different effects.


Next, go to [Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur] and use the settings shown here. You can adjust them as you like.

Next with the blue layer selected press “Command T” or go to [Edit->Free Tranform] and while holding “Alt/Option” drag until the tranform bounding box reaches the edges of the button.

Next, while holding command click on the black rectangle layer. This will select the black rounded rectangle. Then select the blue layer. Once you have done this press “Command + Shift + i” or go to [Select->Inverse]. This will reverse the selection, so it is now selecting the opposite to what was selected before.


Press “Delete” or go to [Edit->Clear].

Your glass button is now complete.

You can also try putting a very transparent image above the black and below the blue. This gives a reflection effect which is really quite innovative.

Here you can see the final button:

Steel Text (With Brushed Metal Look)


Make Steel Looking text. Also learn how to make the brushed steel texture. Once you know this you can add your own modifications and create your own steel look. There are millions of ways of making the steel text look. This is one way.

Level: Intermediate

Photoshop Version: CS2 (Can be done in Earlier versions up to Photoshop 7.0)


DPI: Dots Per Inch. This means how many pixels there are per inch of space.


First create a new image with a black background. Create it 5 Inches Wide by 1 1/2 Inches tall at 300 dpi, or a dpi you desire.

Next, with your choice of font, create a white text saying whatever you would like to put there. I used Steel as the text and Franklin Gothic as the font. Some other good fonts for this are Bank Gothic and Copperplate Gothic.

Press “Ctrl j” while selected on the text layer. This will make a copy of the layer.

Next, rasterize the text layer by selecting it and going to [Layer -> Raterize -> Type ]

Next click on the rasterized type layer and click the lock transparent pixels button. This will loc the transparent pixels, so that anything you do to this layer wont affect the already transparent pixels.

Next thing you do is go to [Filer -> Noise -> Add Noise]

Apply the settings as seen here. If you want more streaks up the amount. If you want mutli-color streaks unclick “Monochromatic” which means one color only.

Next, go to [Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur]

Apply the settings here, or change them as you desire. The main one you might want to adjust is distance. This is how much it applies the motion blur.

Now Select the gradient tool. Go to the gradient editor and select the “foreground to transparent” gradient. Click ok. Make sure your foreground is black. Then drag you gradient from bottom-right up to the top-left and top-left to the bottom-right. Here you can see what we are going for:

Next double click on the rasterized text layer to open the layer styles window. Check the box named satin and set the settings shown here or a variation if you like.

This completes the tutorial. Here is the outcome: