Creating classic orange button using Adobe Photoshop  

With the latest development of Internet based businesses, the aspect of websites has become a more important issue. Simple HTML web sites are still being used and they base themselves on functionality rather than on looks, but more and more web sites are using complex and elaborate graphic designs to attract visitors. And if you can combine perfectly the visible aspect of your site with a high degree of functionality, you can obtain two things at once.

A nicely designed web site uses buttons to help people navigate through the different sections of the web site. There are many easy in which you can create web buttons: there are stand alone programs, or you can chose a complex suite like Adobe Photoshop to design the web buttons alongside the other graphic images for your web page. Using Adobe Photoshop to create the web buttons has many advantages when compared to other graphic editing programs Photoshop offers you many advanced editing options and features. And why spend more an additional web button creating software, when you can use Photoshop to both edit your images and to create the functional elements of your website.

This tutorial will show you how to create different types of buttons for your web site. First you will learn to create glossy web buttons.

Start the Adobe Photoshop program and open a new image file. When selecting the new image’s size, choose a medium size, let us say 400 x 400 pixels. Let the background to its default color, white.

Now think of a desired shape for your button. You can use Photoshop’s drawing tools to create buttons of any shapes and sizes you think suit best your web site.

For this learning process, you will be creating a standard, rectangular button. For this you need to create a new layer (Shift + Ctrl +N) or go the ordinary path: Layer > New > Layer….

After creating the new layer it is time to draw your web button. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (or press M on the keyboard) and draw an usual rectangle. When drawing the item, make sure to select the desired size.