Creating Stylish Buttons in Photoshop

This tutorial will teach you how to make cool buttons in Photoshop.

We are going to create a button for your artwork to help it stand out using nothing but Layer Styles. Then we will save those settings to your Styles palette so that same look can be easily applied to another piece of artwork later with the click of one icon.

First, we will apply the Layer Styles to a generic piece of artwork so they can be saved to our Styles palette to be applied to our real art later. Using the elliptical marquee tool, draw a circle in the center of a blank layer (holding down Shift while dragging out your shape will hold it as a perfect circle). Fill that shape with 50% gray.



Next, click on the Add a layer style button at the bottom of the Layers palette to open the Layer Style dialog box. This is where all the work will take place.



Select Drop Shadow. Depending on the size of your file, your settings here may vary. For reference, my document is 500px by 500px and 72dpi. Adjust your settings until you get the same look. I applied a drop shadow size of 5px, a distance of 5px, and default settings.



Next, select Inner Glow. Change the Blend Mode to Multiply and set the color of the blend to black. Under elements, I increased the size of the glow to 10px. This will create the darkened edges you see when you view a button. Already, we have created some depth to the design.



Apply a Bevel and Emboss. Apply an Inner Bevel set to Smooth. Increase the size until you get some thick highlights and shadows to create even more depth to the button. I chose a size of 30px. Next, reduce the level of the Opacity for the Shadows in the Shading section of the dialog box. I went all the way down to 30%.



Click OK. With your circle layer selected, open your Styles dialog box. Click on the Create new style icon, and in the next box, give it a name. Make sure the “Include Layer Effects” box is checked.



Now your Style preset is ready to use -- take any artwork you have completed and with its layer selected, simply choose your button effect from the Styles box, and you are finished!