This tutorial is meant for the more advanced user of Paint Shop Pro. The tutorial is written using Paint Shop Pro 7 locations for tools but all the tools used are also available in Paint Shop Pro 5 or 6 as well. This tutorial is my attempt to make the Mac type Aqua Button.

Open an new image 400x200 and a transparent background. Now we need to create a pattern for the pill button which I laid out as shown below. I used vectors to make mine but there are many other methods including using a font. I made mine to be 311 x 96 this should give a good capsule shape.

Pattern

Now we need to make a selection from our pattern and save it to an Alpha Channel. Once this is done open a new layer and flood fill it with the color you want for your button. I used R:65; G:113; B:166 and named this layer Pill. It should resemble some like below.

Pill Layer

 

We now add another layer and do Effects > 3D Effects > Cutout and set it as follows: Vertical=20; Horizontal=0; Opacity=80; Blur=33; Shadow=Black; Fill interior unchecked. Once this is done turn the opacity on the layer down to about 70% with the blend mode set to Burn. You should now have something similar to the image below.

Top Shadow Layer

The next step is to open an new layer above the cutout layer and if not loaded then reload your pill selection. Now go to Selection > Modify > Contract set to 10, then Selections > Modify > Feather set to 10 and now flood fill with white. I call this layer Bottom Highlight and it should look something like below.

Bottom Highlight Layer

At this point you can now turn off the selection. Now with the mover tool slide the Bottom Highlight layer downward till the top edge is a little below center on your pill layer. Once this is done set the layer blend mode to Dodge and opacity to about 38%. Apply Gaussian Blur set to about 10 to the highlight layer and reload your pill selection. Now do Selection > Invert then hit the delete key. You should now have something like below.

Moved Layer

Now comes the top highlighted area of the pill button. First thing to do is add a new layer and load your pill selection. Once this is done do Selections > Contract set to 5, then with the rectangular select tool and holding down the control key deselect the bottom 3/4 of the selection. You should have a selection similar to below.

Top Selection

If it matches at this point then go to Effects > 3D Effects > Drop Shadow and set it as follows: Vertical=26; Horizontal=0; Opacity=80; Blur=33. Now do turn off your selection and go to Effects > Blur > Gaussian Blur set to about 10. Now set this layers blend mode to Burn and Opacity to about 40%. You can now merge this layer with the Pill layer you created earlier if you wish. It should resemble the image below.

Middle Shadows

We are now ready to make the top highlight and finish off our button. We now need to add a new layer and load our Pill Selection. Now do Selection Modify > Contract set to 5. We need to cut off the bottom 2/3 of the contracted Pill Selection so hold down the control key and with the rectangle selection tool, select the unwanted area. We now flood fill this section on the new layer with a gradient from the darkest color in your pill to white at the top as show below.

Top Highlight

Now unselect the area and select it with the rectangle selection tool by drawing a rectangle around the area then click the left mouse button anywhere on the top highlight area we just flood filled. This will select it and float it. Now get the deformation tool and hold down the control key while pulling one of the bottom corner nodes to the center. This will give us a nice shaped highlighted area. Once done you should have something like below.

Deformation

Now to finish up our button we need to add another layer and call this one Highlight edge. Open our Pill Selection and then Effects > 3D Effects > Cutout set as follows: Horizontal & Vertical set to 0, Opacity to 100 and Blur to about 46. Once done set this layer blend mode to burn and opacity to about 95%. We have now completed the button and need to set all the opacity of the layer to the background we will use. Below is the button ready for use.

Final Button

Adding text and shadows to the button will depend on your needs. Your background and labels for the button will effect how to set the opacity for best effect. I've included the logo at the top of the page in addition to the pill pattern in the Pattern *psp file below. Take a look at it and you will get an idea on how the opacity sets up to give you a full effect. One note in closing is the text in this file is distorted under the button using the warp tool in PSP 7.

Download pattern *psp file here.

This page was last updated on March 17, 2002 by Joe Cilinceon