First appeared on March 14, 2001
Last update on Saturday, November 17, 2001
Easy to make reflective button. No, it doesn't look like plastic.
First create a new document by pressing Ctrl+N. I set the dimensions 200 by 150 pixels, and the contents transparent; but feel free to make it smaller or bigger.
Select elliptical marquee by holding the left mouse button on the marquee tool:
Draw a circle by clicking and dragging with the left mouse button while holding the Shift and Alt keys.
Set the foreground color to light blue. You can use the swatches palette (Window > Show Swatches) for quick color picking. Now press X to exchange the foreground and background colors, and set the foreground color to white. Your colors should look like this:
Select the radial gradient tool by holding the left mouse button on the gradient tool as we did when selecting the elliptical marquee tool.
Now double click on the radial gradient tool to open up the Radial Gradient Options palette, and click on the Edit... button to design our very own reflecting sphere gradient.
The finished gradient is seen below. You can do it yourself or download the gradient file and open it in the gradient editor. If you decide to do it yourself click on the New button, type a name for the gradient (e.g. Reflecting sphere). The locations of the color stops are as follows: 0, 50, 70, 85, 100. F stands for the foreground color and B for the background. The unnamed color stop is a shade of blue I dragged from the swatches palette.
When the gradient is complete press the OK button; our little nice gradient will be automatically saved. Create a gradient as shown in the figures on the left.
We will now use the often overlooked Paint Daubs filter found under Artistic filters. Select Filter > Artistic > Paint Daubs, and apply the filter with the following settings:
Brush Size: 13
Sharpness: 5
Brush Type: Sparkle
Now press Ctrl+D to deselect the selection, and there you go!
Here is how it would look like over a background with some lighting. Of course there are endless possibilities. Just experiment a bit.
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