Yay a sweet Button tutorial! You have hit the Jackpot!

End Result:

Requirements:

Photoshop CS

Other versions might be the same, but no guarantees.

Begin:

Make a new document in photoshop. Make it 150x40 px. Fill the background with black.
Then make a new layer [shift+ctrl+N].
Select the whole canvas [ctrl+A]
and right click on the picture and go to "stroke"
make a white 1 px stroke on the Inside.

You should now have a white border around your small little button.

Next we need to make a selection with the rectangular Marquee tool:

Make a new layer now and select the Gradient Tool:

Get a white to transparent gradient.

Next make a gradient in the selection, Start above and go down, make sure you avoid this:

Instead try for this:

Also make another gradient on the bottom, Like this:

Okay now, make a new document, 3x3 px, were going to make a pattern.
zoom in as far as you can go and make sure it looks exactly like this:

Transparency pixels at the bottom left and black pixels to the top right.
Press [ctrl+A] and go to Edit/Define Pattern.

Now head back to your old document make a new layer and press [ctrl+A] again.
Right click the canvas and go to "Fill" and in the window that pops up go to "Pattern" and find the pattern you made.
Click OK. Now lower the opactiy of that layer to about 10%. Looks nice eh?

Yay, now go back to your gradient tool and edit the gradient again, this time your going to make a cool coloring gradient.

Adjust the gradient slider bars match or resemble these:

The Color Numbers are 0a330b 378a3d 9bd35f daf29f f7ffc1
Now your button should look beautiful.
Add some text and your done.

You can also keep adding stuff if you want.

Make it pretty by making random patters on it with the rectangular marquee tool and filling with different greys.

DONE!

Tutorial by Tim Barton ArtOfTimBarton.com for other sweet stuff

Email: timmythepowderedmilkman@yahoo.com If you have any questions. (I love random emails < This doesn't mean viruses)

© Tim Barton 2005 All Rights Reserved