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Effective Use of Photoshop:

Making a Metallic Button with a Matte Finish

More buttons that use gradients! We discussed earlier on the gradient button-making skills in “Making a Gradient Button”. We’re going to make matte-finish metallic buttons like the ones shown here.

Matte-finish metallic buttons

Solution

Rectangular, Matte-finish, Metallic Button

1. First, create a simple raster gradient button. We shall use two different shades of gray.

Creating a grayscale gradient button

2. Lock the layer by clicking on the Lock Transparent Pixels icon at the top of the Layers palette. Select a light gray (I’ve used #ebeef0) and use the Pencil Tool (B) to draw left-hand and top borders on the rectangle button layer.

3. Select a dark gray (We’ve used #515a60) and draw bottom and right-hand borders onto the button layer, as shown in the example below. Remember to keep your lines straight by holding down Shift as you’re drawing them.

Drawing borders

4. Sure, we could use the button as is, but we’d like to do a few more things to it. First, we’re going to apply a noise filter to our button. Before we do this, make sure that you’re satisfied with the size, shape, and color of the button, as it’s hard to make changes to these properties after the filter has been applied. To add the matte finish select Filter > Noise > Add Noise. This will give the button a grainy look and display the Add Noise dialog box. Be sure to check the Monochromatic checkbox, and adjust the amount of noise that you want to introduce. We’ve set here as 2%.

Adding noise

5. If you feel that the grainy effect is too pronounced, select Edit > Fade Add Noise to drop it back a bit. Change the opacity of the fade (in the example below, we have set as 50%) and click OK.

Fading the noise effect

Use Fade Promptly!
To use the Fade command on a filter, you’ll need to do so immediately after the filter has been applied, otherwise it won’t be available.

6. Let’s look at our button now. It’s certainly something we could use, but while we’re on a roll, let’s style it up a bit more with some lighting effects.

Rectangular matte metallic button

Select Filter > Render > Lighting Effects to bring up the Lighting Effects dialog box, shown below. Select Spotlight from the Light type drop-down menu.

Changing the direction of the spotlight

7. In the preview graphic, you’ll see an ellipse with a line through it — this line indicates the direction of the light. Click on the direction handle at the end of the line and drag it to the upper left-hand corner of the preview window. You can then click and drag the handles on the ellipse outwards to increase the “spotlight” area, as shown here.

Applying the lighting effect

8. Finally, drag the Gloss property slider towards its Matte side (shown at the bottom of the previous page). When you’re satisfied with your button preview, click OK. Now we’re happy! Our finished button is shown below.

Our acheivement!

Rounded, Matte-finish Metallic Button

Creating a rounded matte-finish button is pretty much the same as creating a rectangular one. The main difference is that we’re going to use a stroke layer effect to add the borders, since it’s going to be difficult for us to draw the borders accurately by hand.

1. Create a rounded gradient button. We used the same shades of gray that were used for the rectangular button in the previous solution.

Rounded gradient button

Now, instead of drawing a border as we did for the rectangular button, open the Layer Style dialog box for Stroke and give your border the settings shown here:

Size: 1px

Position: Inside

Opacity: 75%

Stroke layer style settings

3. Change the Fill Type to Gradient. Click on the Gradient swatch and set the gradient colors to white (#ffffff) and a darker gray (#384046). As the opacity of the stroke is lowered, you’ll want more contrast between the light and dark colors.

4. Adjust the Angle so that most of the gradient stroke is at a slight angle in relation to the button.

5. Click OK to apply the stroke effect. The example below shows the result of our stroke.

Applying the stroke effect to the button

6. Now, add noise and apply a lighting effect (steps 4-8 in the Rectangular, Matte-finish Metallic Button solution), and your rounded button is complete!

Completed rounded matte-finish metallic button

Making a Shiny Metallic Button

Here, we are going to show you how to create shiny, metallic buttons like the ones shown below. We’ll also show you how you can vary their appearance using different settings.

Shiny metallic buttons

Solution

Create a raster or vector button. We’ve created both a rounded and rectangular button in this example. The color of the button is unimportant, as it won’t affect the final result.

Basic buttons

2. The fun begins! Open the Layer Style dialog box by clicking on the Add a layer style button at the bottom of the Layers palette and selecting Outer Glow from the menu that appears. In the dialog box, change the Blend Mode to

Applying outer glow

3. Now, select Stroke from the styles list in the dialog box to add a
stroke layer effect. Here we have used a dark gray, 1px stroke, as shown here.

4. We’re ready to add the gradient overlay. Select Gradient Overlay from the Styles list in the dialog box, and double-click on the gradient color swatch to open the Gradient Editor Dialog box.

Applying a stroke to the button

Set the colors of the gradient as we’ve done below. Add more color patches to the gradient bar by clicking anywhere along the bottom of it. Edit the color of a patch by double-clicking on it to bring up the Color Picker. You can also click and slide color patches to adjust the appearance of your gradient.

Adding the gradient overlay

5. Click OK to apply all the layer styles. Your shiny, metallic button is complete! Turn off the Stroke style for a more subtle effect (uncheck its checkbox to do so) – We did this for the left button in the examples shown here.

Completed shiny, metallic buttons

Variations

You can vary the appearance of your shiny button by playing with the gradient editor settings. The examples below show how the look of our shiny button changed when different gradient configurations were applied.