Tutorial :: Making Mac Aqua Buttons with Paint Shop Pro 8.

This tutorial aims to show you how to make a button of any shape which has the Mac Aqua look to it, using Paint Shop Pro 8.  In the tutorial I have deliberately used an unusual shape (a hexagon), however the effect looks best on a wide button with rounded edges, like this one:

It should work OK for most simple shapes:

Create a new 16.7 million color image.  Make sure that the canvas is bigger than the button that you want to make.  I have used a 200x200 canvas.

Select the area that will become your button.  I have used a custom selection which I saved earlier:

Save your selection in case you accidentally lose it later.

Gradient fill the shape with the colors of your choice.  Darker color at the top, lighter color at the bottom:

With the shape still selected, create a new raster layer and activate it.

From Effects->3D Effects choose Cutout.  I think this is called Inner Glow in Photoshop:

Set Opacity and Blur to around 50.  Set the horizontal offset to 0 and the vertical to around 30.  You may need to fiddle with these values slightly to get the button looking right, depending on its size and shape.  It should now look like this:

With the shape still selected, create a new raster layer and activate it.

From Effects->3D Effects choose Cutout:

Set Opacity to 100 and Blur to 15.  Set the horizontal and vertical offsets to 0.  You may need to fiddle with these values slightly to get the button looking right, depending on its size and shape.  It should now look like this:

With the shape still selected, create a new raster layer and activate it.

Deselect approximately the bottom two-thirds of the shape:

From Selection->Modify choose Contract.  Select about six pixels.  You may need to fiddle with this value slightly to get the button looking right, depending on its size and shape.  It should now look like this:

From Selection->Modify choose Smooth:

Set Smoothing Amount to 15.  Select Anti-alias and de-select Preserve corners.  You may need to fiddle with these values slightly to get the button looking right, depending on its size and shape.

Edit your gradient to be 100% opaque at the white end and 0% at the black end.  Fill the selection with this gradient:

It should now look like this:

Change this layer to screen mode.

Deselect everything.

From Adjust->Blur choose Gaussian Blur.  Set the radius to 1.  It should now look like this:

Change this layer's opacity to around 75.  It should now look like this:

All done.  For the final shot I have merged all of the layers together, then duplicated the resulting layer.  I then moved the bottom layer down a bit and applied a Gaussian Blur at 10 radius, then lowered the opacity of both layers and added a background:

You can contact me via email on "nrkn at nrkn dot com".