Celoxdesign V2 menu headings Tutorial

Intro:

In this Adobe photoshop tutorial I'll show you how I made Celoxdesign's V2 menu headings.

Step 1:

Open up a new file with dimensions: 300x100px (widthxheight). Take the paintbucket tool and set foreground to #E6E7EC, fill the "Background" layer with this color.

Press D on your keyboard to reset your for and background color. Take the Rounded rectangular tool and make a shape like mine.

Step 2:

If your happy with the shape you just made you can rasterize it so we can smooth it out. Right click the "Shape 1" text or the thumbnail next to it and press Rasterize layer.

Now you have to smooth out the edges, if you don't know how you can follow this tutorial on how to do so.

Step 3:

Next is to fill our shape with a nice color, Let's take not the same color as mine just for the fun of it. But they key to success is to take dark color so our shines which we'll make later on will have a more glossy effect.

Ctrl+Click the Shape in the layers window, set the foreground color to: #5d2c35 and hit Alt+Back to fill.

Step 4:

Ctrl+Click the little black and white thumbnail in the layers window, which is our layer mask we talked earlier about in the smooth edges tutorial.
If you Ctrl+Click the normal thumbnail it makes a selection of the old shape without the smooth edges, so be very carefull what you click!

Just to make it all more clear, Hold ctrl and click on the normal thumbnail of Shape 1, then On the black and white and watch the selection change.

Now we got the right selection it's time to actually do something with it hehe.

First we have to contract the selection (making it smaller), later you will see why, to do so go to Select > Modify > Contract

Make a new layer Ctrl+Shift+N and name this layer Shine_Top.

Reset your colors (Hit D on your keyboard to reset and X to switch,making white the foreground).

Take the gradient tool set the gradient to Foreground to Transparant shown below:



and make a gradient from the top of the selection to like 3/4



Now cut off the bottom so it has a sharp edge, make a selection similar to mine shown below



And press delete on your keyboard.