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Home |Tutorials |Transparent buttons one page

By jamesvalue

Transparent buttons one-page tutorial

thanks to Miss B to JimL to Juli to Fred for their languages corrections !

If you feel unfamiliar with terms like color palette , layers palette , tools toolbar , tool options menu , please visit this page.

Building "transparent style" buttons in paint shop pro8 is quite easy .





Download the script for this tutorial HERE! (only for psp8 owners).

To download the script , just right click on it and choose "save target as"(if you have a Microsoft O.S. and Browser), now rename the script from buttonJamesvalue .txt , to buttonJamesvalue.PspScript , then browse for the "script restrictedted" folder created by Paint shop pro 8 , and save the script into it.

This is the final result

Open a new 270X70 pixel , 24bit , transparent , image.

select all the canvas content (only the blank canvas for the moment!)
selections>select all (ctrl+A)



Contract the selection by 9pixels
selections>modify>contract number of pixels: 9




then smooth the selection by 30 pixels with both antialias and preserve corners "unchecked"
selection>modify>smooth



Save this selection to alpha channel , you'll indeed use it in future.
selection>load save selection>save selection to alpha channel.

In the tools toolbar pick the flood fill tool (F) , in the materials palette set a "gradient" as a foreground style , and click on the gradient box to open the material/gradient window , then click on the "edit button" to open the gradient editor , click the button named "new" to define a new gradient , name it "button" and build a two-colors gradient.

Here's the image to copy the gradient from

You can avoid these operations by downloading and loading an already-made gradient here , but if you wish to make it by yourself , just use these settings:

color1=RGB=160.179.250 (HTML code=#A0B3FA)
color2=RGB=14.59.228 (HTML code=#0E3BE4)
gradient name=button


Click "ok" both for the edit and the materials palette . then fill the selection with the gradient. The gradient should be "linear" with the lighter color at the bottom of the selection , if it is not like that , just open the material/gradient box and adjust the settings.



Now we'll create a white highlight on the button. To do this , we need to create a new gradient and a different selection. Let's adjust the selection first.

selections>modify>contract by 3 pixels
selection>modify>feather (ctrl+H) by 10 pixels
This is what you should get after the selection adjustements




We now create a new gradient for the highlight but this time the gradient should be partly transparent , and white to white colors.
As usual you can download the gradient here , but if you prefer to build the gradient yourself , here are the settings

COLOR SETTINGS
color1=white
color2=white

OPACITY SETTINGS
location color1=10 , opacity1=100
location color2=45 , opacity2=0

NAME
name=reflex

Here's the gradient

Now switch to the material/gradient , by clicking "ok" on the gradient editor tab and be sure the below settings are applied
Style=linear invert=yes the top of the gradient should be white.
Click inside the selection to fill it



And you're done!

We now add a metallic frame to the button , to do this just create another raster layer for the frame.
layer>new raster layer

then deselect , selection>select none (ctrl+D).

Load the selection you saved before. selections>load/save selection>load selection from alpha channel.(load).

Invert the selection selection>invert

Set the material palette foreground style to a solid color=medium gray (RGB=192.192.192) and fill the selection.



Now invert the selection selections>invert
expand by 9 pixels selection>modify>expand (number of pixels=9)
invert again selections>invert
And then remove the unnecessary pixels : edit>clear (canc)
then deselect again , selections>select none (ctrl+D)


Now we'll give a 3d shape to the frame effects>3d effects>inner bevel


using the same settings of the image

We'll now Use the curves to give the frame a metallic looking
adjust>brightness and contrast>curves

copy the 4 Points curve from the image

Your final button should "more or less" look something like this




Making the buttons appears like transparent is quite simple in psp8 , for further details about the used tecnique you can go HERE.

END


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