Photoshop Tutorial: Cool Blue Gradient Content Headers, Buttons and Tabs

Colourful Content Headers, Buttons and Tabs for Your Website

A. Content Headers and Buttons

1. Let's start then! Open a new document 200x200 pixels with white background.

2. Set your Foreground colour to #2A7EC6. Grab your Round Rectangle Tool, set it to the Fill Pixels mode and draw a rounded rectangle about 240x40 pixels or any dimensions you are happy with. Name this layer Header_Body.

3. CTRL+click on the Header_Body layer to select it. Set your Foreground colour to #0E4C80. Create a new layer and name it Gradient. Now take your Gradient Tool and set it to the Foreground to Transparent mode. Start a gradient from top to bottom as shown in this image (keep SHIFT pressed while you are making the gradient in order to keep it straight).

4. Now comes the hardest part but also the most important one. Grab your Pen Tool, set it to Paths mode and start a path from the upper right part and then to lower left part to continue at the bottom right corner to the right upper corner and close at the point you started (see image). Change to Convert Point Tool and try to form a wavy shape as shown below. Note that you can always change the position of your anchors by means of the Direct Selection Tool-I had to make some small changes to "catch" the right (!) wave ;o) (see image).
As soon as you're finished right-click on the path and select it (Make Selection). Set the Feather Radius to 0 pixels. Press CTRL+SHIFT+I to inverse the selection and hit delete.

5. And now the fun begins! While you are on the Gradient layer make sure that the Header_Body layer is just below that and press CTRL+E to merge down. Name the merged layer you created Header_Full.