Clean Professional Navigation
Create a clean and stylish professional looking navigation

author:
  Blake
title:
  Clean Professional Navigation
date:
  Mon 24 January 2005
category:
  Web Layout and Design
credits:
 


New set

Create a new set aka "Folder" and call it "Navigation"





Rectangle select

Select a the colours light grey and dark grey and then make a rectangle selection that is roughly 150% bigger then the button you intend to make.





Inverse the Selection

Now go to select > modify > smooth, enter 3. Then select > inverse, press delete, then select > inverse.



Duplicate the layer

Proceed to make a duplicate of your layer, and then choosing the original (which is below your duplicate) press Ctrl+u and decrease the lightness some around -10, then move your layer down 5 pixels or so.



Resize the button

Finally click on the duplicate layer, press ctrl+e and then press ctrl+t to resize down to the apporiate size of the button you wish to create:





Add layer style

Now to give extra depth, add an outerglow:



and a stroke:





Create a dotted line

Now you'll need to create a dotted line, an easy way is creating a new layer, making a 1x1 pixel box fill it and duplicate it. Make a line of grey then another line of white, and place on the button as so:
*Note this is zoomed in on the button itself*





Positioning the dots

After positioning the dots, you may want to change the lightness of the button by pressing ctrl+u it should look something like this:





Creating small arrow.

Now you need to make a small arrow. Create a new layer, above all of your current button layers, then using polygonal marquee tool:



you will need to hold shift and make a small arrow.



Add layer style

Position the arrow to the left of dotted line and add the following outerglow:



The last step is adding some text, with a dropshadow of:





Clean Professional Navigation

Congratulations you should have something like this!




For questions and help regarding this tutorial,
please post a message at the forums.
Want your link here?