Glowing Button

Quick reference

• 00:00 Now before I begin adding shapes, let's go ahead and set up the document first.
• 00:09 I'm gonna be starting with an 800 by 600 pixel document,
• 00:12 which should be large enough for a simple design like this.
• 00:16 Now in terms of the background color,
• 00:17 it's going to be what I am basing the other elements off of,
• 00:20 this isn't required, but I found that it creates a nice, smooth design.
• 00:24 I am gonna be using a dark gray, the value is going to be two, two, two, two, two.
• 00:29 Once the color set Option Delete on the Mac or
• 00:33 Alt Backspace on Windows, will fill your background with the foreground color.
• 00:39 The last thing I'm gonna set up are my guides.
• 00:41 This will help position the circles perfectly in the center of my document.
• 00:46 If you don't see your rulers on the left and top of your work space, Command or
• 00:50 Control R will reveal them allowing you to
• 00:53 pull out your guides from the left and the top.
• 00:55 And as long as Snap is turned on under the view menu at the top,
• 00:59 your guide should snap nicely at the horizontal and vertical center.
• 01:05 Good, now we're ready to start creating.
• 01:07 In your tools bar on the left, go ahead and grab the eclipse tool, and make sure
• 01:11 on the options bar at the top, that you're gonna be creating a shape and not a path.
• 01:17 Now starting in the center of your document where the guides intercept,
• 01:20 start dragging out your first ellipse.
• 01:23 You're gonna notice two problems, one it's not a perfect circle and
• 01:27 two it's not being created from the center.
• 01:30 The first problem can be solved by simply holding down your shift key while
• 01:33 dragging out your shape.
• 01:35 This will constrain it to a perfect circle or
• 01:37 a perfect rectangle, depending on which tool you have active.
• 01:41 Second, to create the shape from the center, in addition to
• 01:43 your Shift key hold down your Option key on the Mac or Alt key on Windows.
• 01:48 As long as these two keys are held down,
• 01:51 you'll be creating a perfect circle being created from the center of your document.
• 01:54 Now that the first shape is created,
• 01:57 we want to add a gradient overly to this shape.
• 02:00 Go ahead and double click on the layer in your layers panel to bring up
• 02:03 the layer styles dialogue box.
• 02:05 Once you're in here, hop into the gradient overlay section and
• 02:08 click on the gradient bar to bring up the gradient editor.
• 02:12 Now we can define our colors.
• 02:14 The color on the left is going to be the color at the bottom of this shape.
• 02:17 As I mentioned earlier,
• 02:18 our colors are going to be defined based on our background color.
• 02:22 So I can simply sample a background color by clicking on it,
• 02:25 and then I can adjust the color to my liking.
• 02:27 For the bottom color,
• 02:28 it's going to be just a little bit lighter than the background color, and then for
• 02:32 the color on the right, I'm gonna do the same thing.
• 02:35 I can sample the background color, and then this time,
• 02:37 it's gonna be slightly darker.
• 02:40 Perfect, so now that the first shape is complete, we're gonna skip the glows for
• 02:44 a second and focus on the uppermost shape.
• 02:46 This is gonna be the shape that's gonna act as a window to the glow.
• 02:50 To keep things simple, I'm gonna quickly duplicate the shape that we
• 02:53 just created with the Command or Control J shortcut, and
• 02:57 once the shape has been duplicated, right clicking on the shape in the latest panel
• 03:01 will allow me to clear the current layer style so I can start fresh.
• 03:05 I'm also gonna change the color of the shape to prepare it for our layer styles.
• 03:09 Double clicking on the shape's thumbnail will bring up the color picker.
• 03:13 I'm gonna set it ever so slightly than the background color.
• 03:16 The value's gonna be two, six, two, six, two,six, two, six,
• 03:19 once I add the layer styles this will change though.
• 03:23 Once the new color's been set this shape needs to be scaled down just a little bit.
• 03:27 Go ahead and enter free transform mode, you can do this with your command or
• 03:30 control t shortcut, and then scale the shape down.
• 03:34 Make sure to hold down your shift key to constrain it to a perfect circle.
• 03:37 We don't want any ovaling going on, and once you're happy with
• 03:40 the size press return or enter on your keyboard to accept the transformation.
• 03:45 Good, now we need to create the window that will allow us to see the glow,
• 03:48 we're gonna do this using a custom shape to cut out a hole in the shape that we
• 03:52 just duplicated.
• 03:54 In your tools bar, where you found the ellipse tool, go ahead and
• 03:57 grab the custom shape tool.
• 03:59 Now on your options bar, at the top, click the shape picker and
• 04:02 scroll down until you see the circle thin frame shape.
• 04:07 If you haven't loaded in all the shapes that come with Photoshop yet, go ahead and
• 04:10 click on the icon at the top right corner of this panel.
• 04:14 Choose all, and then choose either append, or okay.
• 04:18 If you choose append, the shapes will be added to the end of your current list.
• 04:22 If you choose okay, it's gonna replace all the shapes completely.
• 04:25 So once your shape has been chosen,
• 04:27 we want to subtract the shape from the current shape.
• 04:30 You can do this by either selecting subtract from shape option on the options
• 04:34 bar or simply hold down your Alt or Option key before you create the shape.
• 04:40 You're gonna notice that when I hold down my Option key,
• 04:42 the cursor now has a minus sign.
• 04:44 This tells me that it's gonna be subtracted from the shape.
• 04:47 Once you start creating your shape,
• 04:49 make sure to hold down the Shift key to constrain it to a perfect circle.
• 04:53 I'm gonna drop it right around here, leaving a little room around the edge.
• 04:57 Good. Now, of course,
• 04:58 what's a shape without layered styles?
• 05:00 I'm only gonna be adding two to this layer, a Bevel and
• 05:02 Emboss, and a Drop Shadow.
• 05:04 Both will help give this shape some depth.
• 05:07 For the Bevel style, I must set it at Pillow Emboss.
• 05:10 I'm gonna keep the depth at 100% but
• 05:13 I'm gonna decrease the size to around two pixels.
• 05:16 This will give me a really nice subtle bevel.
• 05:18 Now, down below on your shading, the angle of the light is completely up to you.
• 05:22 You can keep it at 120 degrees, or
• 05:24 you can rotate it based on your personal preference.
• 05:27 I'm gonna pop it at 90 degrees.
• 05:30 As for the highlight and shadow mode,
• 05:31 the highlight mode is gonna be set to overlay with a nice baby blue color.
• 05:36 This will add a very slight blue glow around the edges of your shape.
• 05:40 The shadow mode will be kept in multiply, but
• 05:42 I am going to decrease the opacity to around 30%.
• 05:46 And finally, to finish off the bevel,
• 05:48 I am going to switch the gloss contour to cone inverted.
• 05:52 Of course you can experiment with the different contours to see which
• 05:55 one works best, and
• 05:56 finally the last layer style I am gonna be adding is a simple drop shadow.
• 06:00 I'm gonna drop the opacity down a touch to around 55%.
• 06:03 I'm gonna set the angle at 90 degrees to match my bevel's lighting source,
• 06:08 if it isn't already, and I'm gonna set the distance at six pixels and
• 06:12 the size at 20 pixels to soften it out.
• 06:15 Perfect, and that'll do it for this shape.
• 06:18 Now we get to the fun stuff, the glows.
• 06:20 This design will contain two glows.
• 06:23 One that will act as a reflection on the back shape and
• 06:26 a stronger glow that will appear in the window.
• 06:28 Let's go ahead and create the reflected glow first,
• 06:31 in your layers panel go ahead and select that first shape that we created.
• 06:35 And then just like we did before, I'm gonna duplicate it with my Command or
• 06:38 Control j shortcut, and then clear it's layer styles, just like I did before.
• 06:43 Now this time, when I jump into my layer styles dialogue box,
• 06:46 I want to be sure to set the fill opacity to zero percent.
• 06:49 Setting your fill opacity to zero percent will hide the contents of the shape,
• 06:54 but it will allow us to see any layer styles that we might add,
• 06:58 like a gradient overlay.
• 06:59 This gradient is gonna be a little bit different from the one that we
• 07:02 added earlier.
• 07:03 First, I'm gonna set the style at radial and
• 07:05 then I'm gonna open up the gradient editor to edit the colors.
• 07:09 When the gradient editor is up, the left color is gonna be the main color of
• 07:12 the glow, which in this case will be a nice baby blue.
• 07:15 I'm gonna use the value zero, zero, a, eight, f, f.
• 07:20 Now, the color on the right will be completely transparent.
• 07:23 This can be done by clicking on the stop that's above the gradient bar,
• 07:27 and then decreasing the opacity to zero percent.
• 07:30 Now, because there's a transition, we need to give our gradient a color to fade to.
• 07:35 Because the design is mostly dark colors,
• 07:38 setting the color at black will do the trick.
• 07:41 So right now you are probably thinking, where is my gradient, well right now it
• 07:46 is hiding behind the top mole shape, that window shape that we created earlier.
• 07:50 Now some of you may not know this, but gradients can be moved.
• 07:53 If you place your cursor over top of your document, you can click and
• 07:57 drag that gradient anywhere you want.
• 08:00 I'm gonna place it at the top right corner so that the rim is nicely lit.
• 08:04 You can also control the scale of the gradient if you don't want it as large,
• 08:08 I'll scale it down to around 75%, and then move it to it's final location.
• 08:13 Good, now we can move on to the main glow, which is gonna appear in the window.
• 08:17 As I love keeping things simple, go ahead and create a duplicate of
• 08:20 the glow that we just worked on, again with the Command and Control j shortcut.
• 08:24 Once it has been duplicated, go ahead and enter free transform mode with your
• 08:27 Command and Control T shortcut, and scale it down.
• 08:30 It should be the size of the window shape that is one top.
• 08:33 You should see the path as you are transforming it, and
• 08:36 just like when creating a shape, holding down your Shift and Alt or
• 08:39 Option key will scale it from the center while keeping it a perfect circle.
• 08:44 Once it's in place, press Return or Enter to accept the transformation.
• 08:48 Now we can go ahead and alter the gradient.
• 08:50 Once you're back in the Gradient editor, start by setting the right stop back
• 08:54 at 100% opacity, and then change the color of that right stop to a dark blue.
• 08:59 I'm going to use the value zero, zero one, nine, three, e.
• 09:04 This will give a very subtle glow to the inside of the window.
• 09:08 Now, we're going to be adding one more stop around 30%.
• 09:11 If you click right underneath the gradient bar,
• 09:14 you'll be able to add an additional stop and move it into place.
• 09:18 You can see the location at the bottom.
• 09:20 Once it's in place, this color's gonna be a lighter baby blue.
• 09:23 The value's gonna be seven, six, c, d, f, f.
• 09:28 Now, right now it's probably not looking that great.
• 09:30 Go ahead and accept the gradient, and
• 09:32 then change the blend mode of the gradient overlay to color dodge.
• 09:37 That's much better, and just like the last gradient,
• 09:39 you can move it into place if you need to.
• 09:42 Okay, the design is complete and now it's time to animate.
• 09:46 Now, before I start the animation section,
• 09:48 this technique will only work on Photo Shop CS6.
• 09:51 You don't need extended but you just need any version of Photo Shop CS6.
• 09:55 CS5 or below does not have the ability to animate the transformations and
• 10:01 with that I'm gonna take a super quick break and
• 10:03 I'll be right back to show you guys how were gonna animate this thing.
• 10:06 All right, I'm back and we're ready to animate.
• 10:09 So there's going to be two layers we're going to be animating, the reflected glow,
• 10:12 and glow that appears in the window.
• 10:14 Now, because of the blending mode changes,
• 10:17 we're going to be animating each of these layers individually.
• 10:20 If you were to merge both of them as a smart object,
• 10:24 the blend modes would get lost leaving us with a pretty ugly result.
• 10:28 Instead, we're going to be converting each glow to a smart object which will allows
• 10:32 us to animate the transformations.
• 10:34 To do this, right click on the first glow and
• 10:37 select the convert to smart object option.
• 10:40 Now, do the same thing for the next glow, but
• 10:42 this one you might notice if you change the blend modes on any of the glows,
• 10:46 converting to a smart object disregards the chain.
• 10:49 But, you can simply change the overall blend mode.
• 10:52 Back to color dodge to fix this issue.
• 10:55 This is why we are converting each layer individually.
• 10:58 Now it is time to animate.
• 10:59 To open the timeline, you can either double click on the tab at the bottom of
• 11:02 your work space, or you can find it under the window menu at the top.
• 11:07 Once the timeline is visible,
• 11:08 you will most likely need to create a new video timeline.
• 11:11 This will list all of your layers and
• 11:13 reflect the currently selected layer from your layers panel.
• 11:16 Let's start with the glow at the bottom,
• 11:19 when that layer is selected you'll want to expand that layer in
• 11:22 the timeline to reveal the different elements that can be animated.
• 11:25 We're gonna want to animate a transform which includes rotation.
• 11:29 To start you want to click on the stop watch icon beside transform to
• 11:33 create the first key frame.
• 11:35 Once you've created the first key frame, grab the play head and
• 11:37 scrub it a little bit to the right.
• 11:40 This will be our half way point where we're going to make the first rotation.
• 11:44 Enter free transform mode again and with command or control t, and
• 11:47 then up on your options bar, you can simply enter 180 for the degrees.
• 11:52 Which is the most you can rotate a layer at once.
• 11:56 Once you accept the transformation the first animation will be made.
• 12:00 You can see it in action by scrubbing back to the first frame and
• 12:03 then pressing your spacebar.
• 12:04 Now, don't worry if you see any loss in quality.
• 12:07 Once the animation's been rendered it'll be nice and sharp.
• 12:10 Now, the same can be done for the second half of the rotation.
• 12:13 Scrub a little bit to the right.
• 12:16 Enter free transform mode, enter 180 for
• 12:18 the degrees, accept the transformation, and your first animation is complete.
• 12:24 Now let's do the exact same thing for the glow on top.
• 12:28 Once again select the layer and expand it in your time line.
• 12:32 Add the first key frame by pressing the stop watch beside transform and then
• 12:37 scrabble over to the right in the same location you did for the previous layer.
• 12:41 Enter free transform mode, rotate 180 degrees, again scrub to the right,
• 12:48 enter free transform and finally rotate another 180 degrees.
• 12:54 And that should complete your animation.
• 12:56 Now to set the final duration of the animation, at the far right corner of
• 13:00 the Timeline you're gonna find the Work Area Endpoint, which you can drag to
• 13:04 the last key frame that you created to set the final duration of the clip.
• 13:09 And finally, if you want your animation to loop rather than just play once,
• 13:13 under the Timeline menu at the top right.
• 13:15 You can choose to loop the playback and that will do it, once your animation is
• 13:20 complete, you can either render it out as a video using the render option at
• 13:23 the bottom of your timeline, or you can save it as a GIF to use it on the web.
• 13:28 Under the file menu, you can choose the save for web option, once you
• 13:31 select GIF at the bottom, you can choose whether it plays back once or forever.
• 13:36 Now again, don't worry if the preview looks choppy.
• 13:39 Once it's saved you're gonna have a nice smooth animation like you see right here.
• 13:43 So try it out yourself

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