How to Create a Slick and Clean Button in Photoshop
This Photoshop tutorial shows you how to create a simple and clean "Web 2.0 style" button sprite with a rollover state. You’ll also learn how to set up the sprite using some basic CSS techniques (CSS background sprite and CSS text image replacement).
The button on this tutorial was inspired, and is modeled after, the Campaign Monitor web interface. By following along, you’ll learn how to create a very similar button.
Final Result
Click on the following image to see a working demo (mouse over the button to see the rollover state).
Download source files
If you’d like to download the source files used in this tutorial, go ahead. The following download link contains the Photoshop PSD file, the finished CSS image sprite in PNG format, and an HTML demo with the HTML and CSS source code.
- campaign-monitor-button.zip (ZIP, 58 KB)
Let’s get started with the tutorial, shall we?
Setting up the document
1 The button’s dimension will be 250px wide and 50px high. To accommodate both the idle state and rollover state, double the height (100px).
2 Drag a guide to the 50px mark to clearly delineate the top half and bottom half of the document. Make sure that Rulers are turned on (Ctrl + R) by checking to see that View > Rulers is checked. Drag a horizontal guide from the Ruler down to half of the document (50px marker).
Creating the shape
3 Activate the Rounded Rectangle Tool and set the radius of the rounded corners to 3px.
4 Drag the shape over the top half of the document. The color of the shape doesn’t matter, as you’ll soon see. The dimensions of this shape should be 250px wide and 50px high.
5 Create a selection around the rounded rectangle shape by Ctrl+ clicking on the shape layer.
6 With the selection still active, create a new layer (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N). Name it Idle. With the new layer active, fill the selection by going to Edit > Fill (Shift + F5).
7 Delete the Shape layer of the rounded rectangle, it’s no longer needed.
Adding some layer styles
8 Double-click (or right-click > Blending Options…) on the Idle layer to open up the Layer Styles dialog box.
9 Add a Gradient Overlay. Double-click on the Gradient to open up the Gradient Editor dialog box. For the left Color Stop, use a dark green color #618926 and for the right Color Stop, use a lighter green color: #98ba40. Move the Color Midpoint to 35%.
10 Add an Inner Shadow. Change the Blending Mode to Normal. Change the color to a light green color, #c6d894. Set the Opacity to 100%. Give Distance and Size a value of 2px. See figure below for the settings used.
11 Add a Stroke. Set the Size to 1px and Position to Inside. Set the color to the dark green as in step 9 (#618926). See figure below for the settings used.
Here’s what you should have so far.
Adding a Radial Gradient
12 Create another layer on top of the Idle layer, name it Radial_Gradient. Switch the foreground color to # b8cf69. Make a selection around the rounded rectangle shape by Ctrl + clicking on the Idle layer. Then switch back to the Radial_Gradient layer.
13 Switch to the Gradient Tool (G). Set the gradient style to Radial Gradient. Click on the gradient to open up the Gradient Editor dialog box.
14 In the Gradient Editor dialog box, select the Foreground to Transparent Preset. Make sure the left color stop is set to light green color, #b8cf69.
15 Make sure you still have a selection around the rounded rectangle shape and that the active layer is Radial_Gradient. Make sure that Rulers are turned on. With the Gradient Tool (G) active, drag from the top of the selection to about 30px below the selection.
16 Adjust the Opacity of the Radial_Gradient layer to 80% or to a level that you like.
Creating the rollover state shape
17 Duplicate the Idle and Radial_Gradient by first Shift + clicking on each one and then right-clicking to open up the context menu. Select Duplicate > Duplicate Layers…
18 Move both duplicated layers down to the bottom half of the document by clicking on them in the Layers palette and then using the Move Tool (V). Rename the duplicate layers – use Rollover for Idle copy and Radial_Gradient_Rollover for Radient_Gradient layer.
Tweaking the rollover state layer styles
19 Except for the colors, we’ll keep everything the same. Double-click on the Rollover layer to open the Layer Styles dialog box. For Inner Shadow, change the color to a light blue, #839dbf. For Gradient Overlay, change the left color stop to a dark blue, #0f2557 and the right color stop to a lighter blue, #245293. Finally, change the Stroke color to a dark blue, #0f2557.
20 We’ll add a Color Overlay layer style for Radial_Gradient_Rollover. Double-click on that layer to open the Layer Styles dialog box. Add a Color Overlay style and set the color to a blue color, #5c737c.
Adding the text
21 For this, we’ll use a simple font family: Arial. Feel free to use whatever you like, but for the following techniques, something that’s bold/thick is suggested.
22 Use the Horizontal Type Tool (T), set the font family to Arial, font style to Bold, font size to 16px, anti-aliasing to Smooth, and the color to white (#ffffff). Type in the text you’d like the button to have.
Giving the text a drop shadow
23 Double-click on the text layer you just created to open up the Layer Styles dialog box. Set the Blending Mode to Normal, the color to a dark green color (#618926), Opacity to 100%, uncheck Use Global Light, Angle to -60%, and finally Size and Dimension to 1px.
Centering the text
24 Ctrl + click on the Idle layer to make a selection. Make sure that the text layer is the active layer.
25 Center the layer vertically by going to Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Vertical Centers.
26 Center the layer horizontally by going to Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Horizontal Centers.
Duplicating the text layer for the Rollover state
27 With the text layer still active, right-click on it and select Duplicate Layer… (or Alt + down arrow key if you have the Move Tool active). Move it down to the bottom half.
28 Ctrl + click on the Rollover layer to create a selection around the lower shape. Use Layer Align to Selection > Vertical Centers. If you somehow moved the duplicated text layer to the left or right, you should also do Layer > Align Layers to Selection > Horizontal Centers to recenter it.
Change the layer style
29 Double-click on the text layer you just created to open up the Layer Styles dialog box. Set the color to a dark blue color (#0f2557), leave the rest the same.
You’re done (with the Photoshop part)!
If you followed along, this is what your button sprite should look like.
Now let’s do the HTML and CSS to get your button working.
30 Save your creation for the web, name it campaign-monitor-button.png.
31 Create an HTML document. Save it in the same location as the campaign-monitor-button.png file.
The HTML
The markup is basic, a link inside a paragraph tag. I chose to use a paragraph tag as a wrapper/container because I don’t think <a> elements should stand alone. It would work without the <p> tag.
<p class="button"><a href="#null">Click this button</a></p>
The CSS
The CSS is a simple CSS background sprite image replacement technique.
I chose the text-indent method because it has been tested to work with screen readers; the downside is that it doesn’t degrade well in the CSS on / Images off scenario (which is a rare situation and usually done out of choice by the user). Giving the <a> element a CSS property of outline: none removes the gray outline in Mozilla-based browsers.
.button {
display:block;
width:250px;
height:50px;
text-indent:-9999px;
}
.button a {
display:block;
width:100%;
height:100%;
background:transparent url(campaign-monitor-button.png) no-repeat top left;
outline:none;
}
.button a:hover {
background-position:0 -50px;
}
Demonstration
Credit
The button on this tutorial was inspired the Campaign Monitor web interface which has these call-to-action buttons in their interface. Check them out when you have a chance, they provide a great service for designers and developers!
Questions and thoughts?
If you have any questions or if you’ve found errors, leave us a note in the comments! Also, feel free to showcase your work here by sharing a link to your finished product if you followed this tutorial.
Related content
- How to Make a Stylish Glowing Box in Photoshop
- How to Create a Sleek and Textured Web Layout in Photoshop
- How to Auto Caption Images Using MooTools
- Related categories: Photoshop Tutorials, Tutorials
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66 Comments
Gabe
May 7th, 2009
Thanks for the tutorial – I always struggle with getting my text to look good, your drop shadow on it looks sweet: crisp and clean.
Matthew Heidenreich
May 7th, 2009
simple and effective tutorial! Thanks for sharing.
Ben
May 7th, 2009
This was a good tutorial. Campaign Monitor uses Gotham as the main typeface on buttons, navigation etc. Gotham isn’t cheap, but it’s a nice touch of professionalism for buttons.
http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_overview.php?productLineID=100008
David
May 7th, 2009
Fantastic touch making use of sprites, thanks!
Mike
May 7th, 2009
Great tutorial — looking forward to seeing more on Six Revisions.
Jacob Gube
May 7th, 2009
@Gabe: Thanks, I like experimenting with Blending Modes in the Layer Styles to create clean, simple text effects. The one on the leading image was by accident (inner glow set at weird settings), but it turned out great.
@Ben: Cool beans, thanks for identifying the actual font. I used Arial simply because I know everyone’s going to have it so that if they really did want to follow the process step-by-step, they wouldn’t be stuck. I’d use my favorite font, Rockwell, if it wasn’t a tutorial. The dropshadow used in this tutorial would be killer with that font.
mishoo
May 7th, 2009
I would keep the shape layers and just change the fill to 0% in case you ever wanted to make them longer or shorter you still have the shapes which allow you to use the handles to resize without compromising the corner radius. Also, keeping the shape makes recoloring the lower shape easy as pie.
Nice tut nonetheless.
Sebastian
May 7th, 2009
Step 11’s image should be 04-15_slick_clean_14.png
alex
May 7th, 2009
Nice tutorial thanks
Warren
May 7th, 2009
Great tutorial, especially the outline:none for mozilla.
William
May 7th, 2009
Very thorough tutorial, and simple, a great combination. Really cleared up some confusion for me over setting up CSS sprites, I hope to implement this into my personal design practices soon.
Seven
May 7th, 2009
Nice tutorial! I’ll try it in Gimp, I guess this should work, too.
Patricia
May 7th, 2009
It never occured to me to use photo shop for buttons. I have some button maker I am using- it does not give me nearly as many options as you have shown.
Tatu
May 7th, 2009
It would have been a whole lot simpler to just use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with a mask to change the color of the bottom button. No need to change the layer styles and you can easily change the hue afterwards.
Paul Saunders
May 7th, 2009
Cool – learned something new here with Align Layers, and red arrows in tut allow me to home in immediately on action req’d. Rollovers still have power. Thanx.
monie
May 7th, 2009
Nice tutorial..
Steve Robillard
May 7th, 2009
Great tutorial and very timely as I have gone through I don’t know how many button styles for a project lately. You may want to swap your p tag for the more semantic button tag instead.
Pali Madra
May 8th, 2009
Great tutorial thanks.
Noob question. Why in the tutorial did we not use the shape tool itself to build the buttons but instead choose to create another layer with a similar mask.
The buttons came out really nice and if I could follow the tutorial anyone can!
Thanks again
Claire Web
May 8th, 2009
I don’t think i have ever seen a tutorial on creating cool buttons. I think it is something most designers need to improve a lot. Hopefully they will take this information on board and improve the badly looking buttons – they should be banned!
Chantelle Tibbs
May 8th, 2009
Look at those shiny beautiful buttons:)
Very well done. I want three of those for my site!
I used DaButtonFactory.com and they are good. Super quick, just not as smooth as these buttons…
Paolo
May 8th, 2009
Great tutorial! Thanks.
Will Morgan
May 8th, 2009
Removing outline: none; is a bad idea as people using keyboard navigation won’t know where their focus is. Just be aware that the outline only displays when the element has focus, which is how a user knows where they are in the DOM.
Also, if you centre the text, then why not centre the radial gradient? It looks a little bit off.
Another note on the Campaign Monitor website, /designer/ gives you a JS prompt, and if you say no, you’re locked into going elsewhere. A nice touch, but you shouldn’t restrict someone from browsing the website based on their profession, IMHO. I’m a UI developer by trade, not quite a designer, but I still wanted to browse the site nonetheless.
ThillaiArasu
May 8th, 2009
Can you post articles for gimp
Jacob Gube
May 8th, 2009
@mishoo: Yeah, that would be a good option. I just always preferred working with layers – but you’re right, keeping the Shape object makes it more flexible to changes.
@William: Well, that’s great – I wasn’t intending to teach CSS sprite positioning here, but I guess seeing it in actual use helps explain the concept.
@Tatu: Great tip, my methods seem to be “destructive” methods where I don’t normally account for changes to the design later on. The Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer is a good call.
@Steve Robillard: I struggled as to what tag I wanted to use for this tutorial. I figured a link is semantic, you click on it and it takes you some place. The text “Click this button” will throw people off (those that use screen readers, for example) – but a meaningful title attribute and replacement of the text link will make it semantic and accessible. I have to admit that I rushed the HTML/CSS part on this one, again, because I wanted it to be a Photoshop tutorial and not an (X)HTML tutorial.
@Pali Madra: Good question, it’s just been my method, you could have used the shape layer instead.
@Will Morgan: There’s got to be a compromise right? Having the outline there sucks using the
text-indentmethod for CSS image replacement because the gray outline would extend to the left of the browser.Jacob Gube
May 10th, 2009
@Sebastian: Fixed it, thanks for letting me know!
Lee Munroe
May 10th, 2009
Great tutorial – nice standard for effective buttons
Devlin
May 11th, 2009
Cool tutorial. Pretty slick.
Jahangir agha
May 11th, 2009
Nice tutorial. I don’t know about the CSS part because I am only a Graphic Artist. But the Photoshop part is nice :)
Sean McKenna
May 12th, 2009
Any web designer should easily be able to make this. Anyone that knows photoshop should be able to make it.
Trip
May 13th, 2009
Instead of ‘outline: none’, you can give it ‘overflow: hidden’ which will restrict the outline to the dimensions of your button.
David P Crawford
May 13th, 2009
Fireworks?
Recruitment SEO
May 21st, 2009
Good tutorial – like your others. I particularly like the simplicity of the CSS ‘moving’ of the image to get round the image preload problem (nothing more annoying than waiting for a hover image!)
Thank you.
Joe
May 30th, 2009
Great tutorial – Thank you so much for the info. I’m new to Six Revisions and just love your site!
Piya
May 30th, 2009
Wonderful tutorial…I tried it..It looks amazing..However, when I uploaded it on website, it displays Green as well as Blue button. Can you suggest why?
Erik Arckens
May 31st, 2009
Hi,
just the most fantastic tutorial I have seen on rollover buttons! Too good for words.
Just a question: can you show generic css and html code in case of hundreds on buttons on lots of pages on a site?
I have trouble getting the right code to work for some fifteen pages with tens of different buttons.
Erik Arckens
May 31st, 2009
Another question:
why do you use a .button and another .button a css-element?
What do you think of this styling:
#button { display:block; width:100%; heigth:100%; background: transparent; url(campaign-monitor-button.png) no-repeat top left; outline:none;} #button span{ display:none;}…and of course also the hover style.
The actual text link can be inside a span element, and the the link text can be hidden with css and the image displayed instead (so that search engines still see the text).
Jacob Gube
May 31st, 2009
@Erik Arckens: For your first question, do you have an example link? It should work fine multiple times, except if you have another
.buttonstyle rule. Second question: that code should work, but it’s basically the same as mine, except instead of ap > a, you usea > span. The reason I did it my way is because I don’t like having anaelement outside of apelement. If you want more than one button in a page, you should really use a class instead of an ID (.buttonversus#code). By the way, the height property is spelled wrong, so you might have issues with that.Erik Arckens
May 31st, 2009
Would it be possible to create a button that includes instead of a href link a php function?
I need a “contact us” button, which activates this php function:
Erik Arckens
June 1st, 2009
Would it be possible to create a button that includes instead of a href link a php function?
I need a “contact us” button, which activates this php function:(I did not include the because it does not display in the blog) ?=createMailto(’info@mysafety.be’)?
Randy
June 11th, 2009
What a great tutorial. Many thanks for taking the time to do all that. My goodness, very thorough!
Arken69
June 18th, 2009
HEY!!! this one is good. thanks a lot for this posting.
Liviu A.
July 2nd, 2009
Hey, great tutorial, thanks for sharing!!!
Really awesome!!
joyoge
July 9th, 2009
nice helpful button tutorial, thanks a lot..
varun
July 12th, 2009
thank yo so much, it is a great tutorial
Junix
July 14th, 2009
Wow, your so proficient in photoshop. i love that.
well, am a newbie of webdesigning, am actually a programmer kaya lang, i nid to design. hehe, akin lahat..
Praise God sa lahat.
soumya
July 15th, 2009
oh!my god this is my favorite website its improves my professional aspects i like this tutorials very much thank you so much for easy going tutorials
Chris
July 15th, 2009
This tutorial is great – does anyone know how to make the button “drepress” when cicked? Is that something you can do with the html or css or do you have to design the “click” pannel? If the former, what would the code be?
Rach
July 27th, 2009
Thanks for sharing this tutorial. Finally I could make my own rollover effect button, as I am only a beginner in photoshop. Thanks once again
Richard
August 21st, 2009
Great Tutorial. Love the site. Now here is a question. What is the easiest way of coding this kind of button if there were say five buttons instead of one?
Jiva
September 7th, 2009
I also would appreciate an example of the code that would be necessary to display multiple buttons. ex. vertical menu bar with multiple links/button running down it.
Christian
September 23rd, 2009
Thank you very much! Just what i looked for.
(Sorry my bad english)
shimon
September 25th, 2009
Thanks for this great tutorial I stumbled it. Just one question how can I make the button smaller?
Pixel Encode
October 24th, 2009
nice, this is a very good tutorial for webdesign
Mr. Dee
October 28th, 2009
Thanks for the tutorial, I am going to teach this to my High School students now that I am comfortable doing it.
johnny rodrigeuz
November 3rd, 2009
very cool. great tutorial!
Danna
November 14th, 2009
Excellent tutorial. Really learned a lot from this.
It seems like such a simple thing to do, but I can’t get the button to open a different webpage in a separate window. Can you help?
Thanks!!
Marcell Purham
November 30th, 2009
Great tutorial. Very nice and easy techniques
Brian
December 18th, 2009
Hi Jacob……Wonderful and simple tutorial!
TUTORIAL CORRECTION – Minor
—————————
One area of detail I’d like to point out since I ran into this issue. You need to deselect the “Use Global Light” when creating the shadows for the text and button. If you don’t the button inner shadow will shift. It can be subtle and not immediately noticed.
You actually see it in the tutorial. As soon as you added the text, your button inner shadow shifted to -60. You can easily see the shadow(highlight shine) at the bottom right of the button(instead of upper left) in your final demo and the tutorial.
Just wanted to bring that to your attention.
Great tutorial!
Stephen Provis
December 18th, 2009
Hi Jacob, Nice tutorial, clean and effective result. Thanks!
Neil
December 23rd, 2009
In step 9 the tutorial references “left Color Stop” and “right Color Stop” what is this? how do I find it? there is no explanation.
Cambridgeshire
January 7th, 2010
Wow, this is another great tutorial. Web Designers often overlook how important making your buttons look nice is! Thanks for sharing.
will
January 17th, 2010
really good tut mate , but you should sort your page css out as often people quit pages that dont look the part , good work
will
Lenny
January 23rd, 2010
Cheers for this, very easy to follow.
Rich
February 23rd, 2010
Great stuff, one of those simple but much needed tutorials which can help everyone from noobs to experts.
KM
February 27th, 2010
I love photoshop for its simplicity yet power. I usually stay away from the more complex javascript or flash based menus and navigation system as I think they negatively impact SEO. Menus like this however are excellent for websites as they are simple yet creative and above all do not require complex javascript libraries.
Borge
March 9th, 2010
Thanks for this nice tutorial dude, love it awesome. And now I know.
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