(The tutorial is somewhat old (in internet years) – dated 2001 in the footer… Makes me wonder if the site is and will be still visible for too much longer…)

There was another one I found that was a little "fancier". (Side note: I went through so many of these pages today, and now I can't find the link to the one I'm thinking of. If someone recognizes these steps please make a note in the comments, and I'll update the post with the appropriate credit link. I've even gone through every page in my history. I suspect that I've combined a number of tricks from a variety of different tutorials to come up with this one, but with all the sites I saw, I can't be 100% sure.) I liked this trick – but it didn't work as well with every shape I tried with it. So click the "read more" to see how to create buttons that look like this:

(Updated 6/2/07 A lot of this is similar to these two tutorials on Bartelme – which I actually DON'T remember seeing before writing this – but I was looking at his badges trying to figure out how he did them, when I wrote this. I hadn't seen that he had a tutorial on them.)

First you make a shape – and apply a gradient overlay – a color of your choosing to black. (with the black on the bottom).

Then select the shape by holding the control key down and right-clicking on the shape layer. Then "contract" the selection. (Select -> Modify -> Contract). How much you want to contract it by will depend on how big your shape is. In the example I used for this tutorial, my shape was huge – so I contracted the selection by 6 pixels. For a normal, relatively small button, probably contracting it by 3 pixels is enough.

What we're trying to do, is get a portion of this selection – just the top half, with a curve in the middle… so I use the round selection tool and hold down the alt and shift key, while right-clicking to make an oval around the top half. This will result in selecting the overlap of the original selection and the new oval.

So this is what we end up with:

Create a new layer. What we're going to be doing is creating a gradient starting from just below the bottom of our new selection to just above it. However, I want the color to be about the same as what the color is at the bottom of that selection, so I use the "eyedropper" tool to grab that color.

The gradient will be using this color – to white – with the white at the top.

So, again, we're starting the gradient just below our selection, to just above… this may take some playing around with, but we want that "curve" in the middle to be somewhat subtle.

And the last step is to add that drop shadow to our shape layer to help the effect.

And this is the final result:

Of course my example is HUGE – but it works equally as well (if not more so) when it's smaller

But as I said originally – while I liked this tutorial as one of the better ones – for some reason, it didn't look as good on some of the "odd shapes" I tried it with – not bad – just not as convincing as the more symetrical, smoother shapes

Added after Another addition to this – I've seen a few buttons that also add a darker border around the button that also helps the effect. Also – when adding text or whatever on the "surface" of the button – if it's a dark colored button, making the text white, and reducing the opacity a bit so some of the button shading comes through, as well as adding a very light drop shadow (0 distance).

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(found via Creativebits)

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Part of this tutorial is similar to one I found here: designsbymark.com (the Software Box with reflection) however, I also add a shadow which helps give more "realism".

(click thumbnails in tutorial to see a bigger image)

Start with your screenshot on it's own layer with a canvas that's larger than your screenshot.

Step 1:
Duplicate the layer and go Edit -> Transform -> Flip Vertical.
Line up the new flipped layer directly beneath the first layer.

Step 2:
Create a layer mask for the (flipped) layer by going Layer -> Add layer mask -> reveal all. Make sure you're working on that layer mask by clicking on it in the layers palette. Set your foreground to black and your background to 50% black. Select the gradient tool from the tool bar. Select the (solid) foreground to (solid) background color gradient.

Then click and drag a gradient starting from the middle of the copied image to the top (where the two images meet). Change the opacity of the flipped layer to where you think it looks good (70%?)

Step 3:
Now lets create the layer that will be the shadow. Create a new layer and select a copy of the shape on the original layer and the flipped layer by holding down the shift and command key (on pc: ctrl key) and clicking on each of those layers consecutively. Fill this shape (on the new layer) with black.

Organize your layers like this:
Top: Original
middle: shadow
bottom: flipped

Step 4:
Hide the "shadow" layer. Click on the original layer, and link it to the reflection layer. Create a "perspective" by distorting the images – go Edit -> Transform -> Distort – then move the top corner (down) and bottom corner (up) on one side to be a little closer together. (hold the shift key to keep the movement only up and down)- then move that side in until it looks right.

Step 5:
Now back to work on the shadow. Add a layer mask. Select the gradient tool, and pick a solid (black) to transparent gradient.

On the layer mask, make one gradient from the top to the center, and another one from the bottom to the center.

Distort this shape (NOT using the corner handles – only the middle handles) so that it's at a sharp angle to the screenshot, but the same width as the original, and keep the middle "handles" on the corners of the original.

Change the opacity of the layer to be very light (10%?) and then apply a gaussian blur on it.

You can move this layer around to get just the right shadow effect.

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