Glossy Navigation Bar

step 1

This tutorial teaches you how to make a glossy navigation bar for your website.

step 2

First open a new document and create a new layer. Grab your Rounded Rectangle Tool and draw a rectangular navigation bar. Make sure the radius is at .06 inches.

step 3

Ctrl+Click the layer you have the rectangle in to get a selection of the shape. Make a new layer and goto Select>Modify>Contract and set it to 3 px. Fill this selection with #6e6e6e.

step 4

Now on on the layer with the gray rectangle, give it a layer mask. To apply a mask, press the mask button(square with circle at the bottom of layer's palette).

step 5

After clicking on the mask button, select your gradient tool and click and drag your mouse on the gray rectangle starting from the top to about a little above the mid section of the rectangle. If it doesn't work, make sure you have the mask selected in the layer's palette before trying. What we want is to fade away the bottom of the gray rectangle.

step 6

Create a new layer and grab your pencil tool. Set it to 1px with the foreground color of #5f5f5f. Zoom in so you can see. Make a straight vertical line near the middle. I zoomed in so you can see.

step 7

Create a new layer and do the same thing, but this time change the foreground color to #232323. Make an identical line next to the gray one.

step 8

Merge these two layers by selecting the layers and press CTRL+E. Now duplicate this merged layer as many times as needed. These are your link seperators. Spread them out and put your link text between them.

final image

Final Result