Professional Home Icon or Button

This tutorial will go over how to create a unique looking web 2.0 home icon or button. In following this tutorial you will learn some basic and advanced Photoshop techniques.
1. Begin with a square - any size will do. Use the rectangular marquee tool (M) & hold down shift to constrain the dimensions. I filled it with #ff0000.

2. On a new layer (ALT+SHIT+N) use the elliptical marquee tool (M) and hold down SHIFT to make a circle, about this size:

3. After filling the circle in with the same color as the square, move the circle over the top right corner of the square. Move it so that it looks something like what I have here. This will serve as all four rounded corners for your button, so make sure it looks good.

4. Next, select the circle layer and merge it down with the square (CTRL+E). Now go to free transform mode (CTRL+T) and move the crosshair dot to the bottom left like so:

5. Now rotate the object 90 degrees counter-clock wise like so. You will notice the crosshair dot acts as a pivot point. Apply the transformation.

6. Now for the fun part. Hit CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+T about four times until you get a completed shape like this
7. Next select all your newly made layers by holding downing down shift while selecting the top layer then bottom layer. You may also merge each layer down. Be careful to leave your background layer alone, though.

8. Next CTRL+click your object layer so it has the marquee selection. Go to select>modify>contract. Enter a value around 3px.

9. With the contracted selection still active, create a new layer (CTRL+SHIFT+N) and fill the selection in with any color (I chose black).


10. Now go to blending options and apply a gradient overlay with these settings:


11. You will have something similar to this:

12. Now CTRL+click the same layer, select the elliptical marquee tool with the ’subtract from selection’ option selected.

13. Now for the ‘glossy’ effect. Draw any circular shape over the selection. This will subtract from your previous selection. I did something like this:

14. This is what I got:

15. Now create a new layer with the selection still active and fill it with white.

16. Next, you can turn down the opacity as low as you like. I made mine at 20%.

17. Now lets go back to our original object layer and go into blending options. Apply these settings:



18. You will get something like this:

19. Now for another fun part! Here is the home icon I used for the logo. The easiest way is for you to copy this image and paste it in your document. Or you may save it to your computer, open it in a new document, and drag it into your current design.

20. Arrange it like so:

21. Next make sure that the image layer is active and then change the blend mode to ’screen’.

22. What this does is make all black pixels transparent with anti aliasing. Pretty nifty huh?

23. Now just lower the opacity level down to whatever looks best. I used around 50%.

24. Now for a final touch. Go back to the ‘glossy’ layer (where you lowered the opacity to ~20%) and select the ‘Add layer mask’.

25. Select the gradient tool (G) and make sure these settings are in effect:

26. Now draw a straight line (hold shift) from right to left at an angle similar to how your glossy layer is shaped. That’s it! Click the final product link to what I got.

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