Metal Button (tutorial)

Saw this effect on a winamp skin and before that somewhere else so I don't claim the original idea


1) Take the pencil tool and draw a box of 75x24 pixels
2) Fill the box with a shade of gray.
3) Draw a white line a little above the center of the square. Your picture should look like the picture below when zoomed in.



4) Select the part below the white line.
5) Set forground color to 136/136/136 and background color to 58/58/58
6) Take the gradient tool and make a gradient from top to bottom (hold shift while moving your mouse)




7) Now select the part above the white line.
8) Set foreground color to white and background color to 101/101/101
9) Take the gradient tool and make a gradient from bottom to top (hold shift while moving your mouse)



10) Make a new layer
11) Take the pencil tool and draw two vertical white lines at the edges of the picture (stay within the black box).
12) Set your layer to Overlay and change the opacity to 75%

There your done, add some shadow, little insets and you're done



You can always experiment with the various shades of grays to get stronger shadow/highlight effects or add an adjusment layer for hue/saturation to give it some color.

Enjoy :D

Sorry for crappy img quality

nice tutorial mate :p