dust and scratches: Simple Button 1

If you are into digital scrap-booking you gonna love this post because today I will be sharing on how to make simple buttons that you can use in your projects using Photoshop.

Here's how:

01. Run Photoshop and make a new document. Width: 4 inches, Height: 4 inches, Resolution: 72 per inch. Next, go to your Toolbox and grab the Paint Bucket tool and fill layer with black. Then, press Ctrl + R to bring out the ruler and then make new horizontal and vertical guides. Grab the Elliptical Marquee tool, hold Shift Key and make a round selection at the center of the layer. see image below.

02. In the Layers Palette, press the Create a new layer icon. Set the foreground color to #ff6600. Grab the Paint Bucket tool and fill the selection with this color.

03. Next, go to Select > Modify > Contract... and contract the selection by 25 pixels.

04. Then, hit Select > Save Selection..., name it and press OK.

05. Next, go to Select > Inverse. Press Ctrl + J.

06. Select back “Layer 2”. Press Select > Load Selection.... and when the menu pops up, look for the name of your selection you just saved. Then check Invert. Hit OK.

07. Press the Delete Key and press Ctrl + D to deselect. Go to the Layers Palette, double click Layer 2 to bring out the Layer Style menu and follow these settings.

This will be the image.

08. Make new guides like in the image being shown below. This will be our guide on where to place the holes of our button.

09. Grab the Elliptical Marquee tool. and in the Options Bar click select Style = Fixed Size and make it 25 px both for the width and height.

Then, make a selection. see image below.

Press the Delete Key.

Move your selection to another angle and press Delete. Do this again until you end up with four holes like in the image being shown below. Then, press Ctrl + D to Deselect.

10. Press "Ctrl + R" and "Ctrl + ;" to hide ruler and guides. We don't need it anymore.

11. Now, select “Layer 3”, double click to bring out the Layer Style menu. and apply the following settings.

This will be the image.

12. Delete Layer 1, we don't need it anymore.

13. Select “Layer 2”, press Ctrl + T to transform, in the Options Bar adjust the width and height to 105%.

14. Hold Shift Key and select Layer 3. This will make the two layers selected. Right click and hit Merge Visible.

15. When these two layers merged, double click layer to bring out the Layer Style menu and make the following settings.

This how our image looks like.

16. Finally, add Drop Shadow and you can also insert a background layer to our image. Save as a psd file for future use.

Here's my final image.

You can also experiment with the size and color of your work like what I did. Just press Ctrl + U to adjust the hue and saturation and you can use Ctrl + T to change the size. Here's mine.