Cylindrical Buttons

I would like to thank T. Michael Clark for teaching me this method of making a cylindrical button. Please visit his site, he has a lot of good tutorials (and he has published the only book on PSP worth buying). You can find his listed on my links page. My instructions for making this button include saving selections and a brushed metal texture. That way you can use the selections to create new, different buttons easily and efficiently.

Brushed Metal Buttons

To create a brushed metal button:

  1. Create a new graphic 150 x 50 pixels 16 million colors.

  2. Using the Selection tool "Ellipse" selected, Feather 1-2, select an oval (this will be your button ends). You can best do this by putting the cross hairs at a vertical position of 25, since the selection will start from the center and move out. Don't worry about placement, you can move it later:

  3. Save this selection to an Alpha Channel (Selections|Save to Alpha Channel).

  4. Deselect and make a new selection with the Selection tool (remember to remove the feather), Rectangular, encompassing about the top third of the graphic as follows:

  5. Set your foreground color to a very dark grey (almost black) and background to white.

  6. Fill the selection with a Gradient Fill set to 180 degrees.

  7. Reverse your selection (Selections|Invert) and reverse the foreground and background colors. Then fill the new selection. You should now have a graphic that looks like the following:

  8. Load the saved end selection (Selections|Load). Move the selection with the Mover tool by right clicking on the selection and hold down the right mouse button, drag the selection to the left side of the button until it looks like the following:

  9. Fill with white. Repeat with right side except fill with black. You should now have a graphic that looks like the following:

  10. Choose Image|Blur|Gaussian Blur at .5. Your image now looks like the following:

    You might want to duplicate this layer (drag it over the "New Layer" icon) and blur one and leave one unblurred. Each will have a different effect.

  11. Now you need to make your brushed metal texture as follows:

    • Add a new layer. Fill with white.
    • Fill with Noise (Image|Noise|Add) set to Random, 90%.
    • Choose Colors|Greyscale, then Colors|Increase Color Depth to 16 million colors again.
    • Choose Image|Blur|Motion Blur and set to 135 degrees, 40 pixels and click on OK.
    • Adjust the opacity slider on this layer until the button shows through.
    • If you want, apply a .5 Gaussian blur to this layer. You might want to duplicate the layer (drag it onto the "New Layer" icon) and blur one and leave the other unblurred.

    Your brushed metal texture should now look like:

    Your button should now look like:

  12. To add engraved text, add a new layer, drop your text in a very dark color then apply a white drop shadow set to 100% opacity, blur 0, offset 1, 1.

Variations:

You can color your button by adding a new layer, filling with color, then adjusting the opacity slider until the button shows through, or you can just create the button colored in the first place (that's how I created the teal button). All you need to remember is to go from a very dark version of your color to white. The rest of the theory applies including adding the brushed metal texture (the color will show through). I reduced the size of this button after creating to illustrate how reducing the button does not hurt it at all.

Applying Textures and Colorizing

You can also apply a texture or color to the original rounded button for a different effect. To create textured buttons or colored buttons:

  1. Create a button as outlined above except use black to white instead of dark grey to white. Do not soften or blur the button.
  2. Add a new layer. Turn off the brushed metal layer.
  3. Fill the new layer with your texture.
  4. Adjust the opacity slider until the button shows through.