After you have created the layer, make sure to fill it with a black color. While pressing the Ctrl key, click on the “layer 1” and select it.

Go Select > Modify > Contract and enter a value of “1”. Make sure you have the “layer 3” selected in the Layers palette and chose Select > Inverse.

Now you can delete the back areas in the image by selecting “layer 3” and hitting “delete” about three of four times. While doing all these steps, make sure to keep your selection in the image.

After setting the “black” color as the foreground color, set the “Linear Gradient” tool to “foreground to transparent”. Click and drag from the bottom of the selection to the top of the list and make sure to deselect your selection.

Because you cannot leave your shadow in this shape, you should blur it a little. You know where you will find the Gaussian Blur tool: Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Do not enter very high values (usually a value of 2 to 5 is enough, especially if you set the layer’s opacity to a value around 50).

After having completed the above steps, you have succeeded in creating your web button. However, all you have right now is a simple button. For you to use it on your web site, you need to put some text on it (so people know what that action does) and to integrate it in your website. While integrating the web button in the page is done with your web development software, adding text to the web button is performed in Photoshop further on. You will need to make the text a bit darker than the button’s color to make it readable.