Super Widget Interface Tutorial

5. Complete Bottom Curve and Top Area

- Highlight the bot curve shape layer by clicking on its text in the layer's pallete.

- Then, create a new layer set and name it "Bot Curve Area". Now the new layer set should be directly above the bot curve shape layer.

- Next, drag and drop the "bot curve shape" layer into the layer set you just created.

Apply the Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss and Gradient Overlay layer styles to the bot curve shape layer as shown:

Inner Shadow:

Bevel and Emboss:

Gradient Overlay:

- Make a new layer called "bot curve light gray", and place it beneath the bot curve shape layer.

- Activate the bot curve shape's selection, with your current working layer as bot curve light gray (the one you just created), expand the selection by 3 pixels.

- Fill the new selection with the gray color #B9B9B9.

- Make a new layer called "outside stroke", and with the selection still active, give it a 1 pixel, black stroke outside, and drop the opacity of the stroke to 70%.

- Right click on the Top Left Circle Layer Set and select Duplicate Layer Set.

- When the dialogue box pops up, rename it to Bot Right Circle and click OK.

- Then drag the newly created layer set down and place it right above the Bot Right Curve Area Layer Set.

- Open the new layer set by clicking on the small triangle and delete the outside circle and outside circle stroke layers.

- With the Move tool (V) as your active tool, and the Bot Right Circle text highlighted in the layer's palette, move the contents of the layer set to the bottom of the bot curve shape.

- Press ctrl + T to bring up the free transform tool.

- Up near the top, on the toolbar, enter 102.00% for width and height as shown below, click anywhere on the document, then hit enter.

- Then, with your current working layer as "inset", give it a gaussian blur of 0.3.

This is what your bot curve shape should resemble:

Top Shape Area

- Now, highlight the "top base shape" layer and create a new layer set called "Top Shape Area".

- Drag the top base shape layer and place it into the set.

- Lock the transparency of that layer, and fill it with #A4A4A4.

- Apply the Inner Shadow and Inner Glow Layer Styles to the top base shape:

Inner Shadow:

Inner Glow:

- Create a new layer and name it "bot hlight"

- Activate the top base shape's selection, and contract the selection by 2 pixels.

- Then give it a 2 pixel, white, stroke on the inside.

- Then gaussian blur of 1.3.

- Zoom in to 200%, and take the eraser tool with the 17 pixel, soft brush.

- Erase the top and sides of the stroke with 100% opacity and a soft brush, to get it to look like my highlight:

- Lower the opacity of the bot hlight layer to 90%.

- Activate the top base shape's selection again, and contract by 13 pixels.

- Create a new channel and fill the selection with white, in that channel and then deselect.

- Take the eraser tool, with 100% opacity and a 22 pixel hard brush, hold shift and drag straight down in two places to divide the selection into three separate spaces:

- Apply a gaussian blur of 2 to the channel, and then open the Levels Dialog (ctrl +L) and slide the sliders to the middle to smooth out the channel.

- Activate the channel's selection and go back into the layers pallette and create a new layer called "button color" above the bot hlight layer in the Top Shape Area layer set.

- Fill the selection with #39B0D2.

- Keep that selection active, and make a new layer below the button color layer you just made. Call this new layer "insets".

- Expand the selection by 2 pixels and apply a black to white gradient to the selection as shown:

- With your foreground color as #3A6471, apply the following Gradient Overlay layer style to the button color layer:

Gradient Overlay:

- Make a new layer and call it bot hlight.

- Activate the button color's selection, contract by 1, and feather (Select -> Feather) the selection by 1 pixel.

- Then, with your foreground as white, take the airbrush tool with the size 17 pixel, soft brush, and follow the directions below (zoom in to 200%, and hide the selection by pressing ctrl + H):

Now your bottom highlight should look like this:

- Deselect the hidden selection you had going (ctrl + D) and make a new layer called "top hlight".

- Grab the line tool, and with a 2 pixel, 100% opacity line, draw sraight across the top from the left side to the right like this:

- Apply a gaussian blur of 0.8 to the line. Now it is just a matter of erasing the excess to make the line look like the top highlight on the buttons.

- Take the eraser, with 100% opacity, and erase around the edges of the button to make it look like this:

Next, we are going to use the same subtle line technique on these buttons as we used on the bot left button.

- Make a new layer called "subtle lines". Now just draw a vertical white line (antialias unchecked) and replicate it over and over until it reaches across the entire button areas. Make sure they are 6 pixels apart from each other.

- Make sure your current working layer is subtle lines and when you are done and the lines are all on the same layer, select the button color's selection, press shift + ctrl + I, to invert the selection, and press delete to clear the excess lines.

- Change the Layer Mode from Normal to Overlay for the lines, and drop the opacity to 20%.

- Make a new stroke layer, activate the button color's selection again, and give it a black stroke of 1 pixel inside. Lower the opacity of the stroke to 80%.

Alright. That about does it for the main shape and main decorations. Now we just go in and add some finishing touches which will be on page 6. Almost done!

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