Making a button look pressed?

[christapherWayn]

Hey folks, just wondering if i could get some tips on how to make a button look like its been pressed... i can make 'gel' buttons all day long, but i have a hard time picturing the way to shade them to make it look like its been 'pressed' (ie. making it look curved inward, not outward)

any tips or know of any tutorials anywhere?

 

[LeviG]

tip:
get a bit of paper and then put a pin through it and pull, will give you the basic lighting, then tweak it till youre happy, or try and find something thats got a dome recessed into it

 

[christapherWayn]

tip:
get a bit of paper and then put a pin through it and pull, will give you the basic lighting

i dont think i did it right, all i ended up with was a piece of paper with a whole in it

 

[tominated]

put an inner shadow with the light source coming from the top. you will need a bit of tweaking tho
btw:instead of making the bright orange a radial gradient, makie it an elliptical gratient and stretch out the sides and put it right at the bottom

 

[mac 2005]

i dont think i did it right, all i ended up with was a piece of paper with a hole in it

All I got was a rock!

 

[ChicoWeb]

reverse your gradiants.

 

[tominated]

maybe even change the white gradient to a grey/black one

 

[mac 2005]

All I got was a rock!

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Get it? It plays on the word "holes" because Charlie Brown made too many holes in his ghost costume and the word "hole" because of poking a pin through the image and because of the "All I got was a ..." reference?

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

<coyote howl><cricket sound><lone man coughs></coyote howl></cricket sound></lone man coughs>

 

[MrSmith]

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Get it? It plays on the word "holes" because Charlie Brown made too many holes in his ghost costume and the word "hole" because of poking a pin through the image and because of the "All I got was a ..." reference?

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

<coyote howl><cricket sound><lone man coughs></coyote howl></cricket sound></lone man coughs>

It'll cost you 25 USD to get a pat on the back for asininity

 

[simie]

You could use this this trick

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Animated-Web-Button/11337

 

[tominated]

You could use this this trick

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Animated-Web-Button/11337

that looks poxy, but it isn't my project, just my opinion

 

[decksnap]

Well if your doing aqua, just do it the way Apple does it and don't depress it at all. Just change the color.

 

[iMeowbot]

Well if your doing aqua, just do it the way Apple does it and don't depress it at all. Just change the color.

That makes more sense anyway. I have a phone with real buttons like that and they don't really look any different when pressed (except that the sides disappear under the surface of course, and my finger's in the way, and… never mind). Anyway, a "backlight" that turns on and off makes more sense than anything.

 

[obeygiant]

you could just "flip" it 180 degrees. Its only "pressed" for an instant so it might work.

by the way, maybe you could enlighten us as to how you make the "gel" look.
cuz it looks cool.

 

[Killyp]

I would shade it from top (100% transparency) to around 50 % transparency at the bottom, with black, and then add a shadow along the top rim, fading out before half way down...

 

[Me1000]

Here is the one mentioned above(hope I got that right ) and something I came up w/

I can give you the PSD file for it(both of them) if you want!

 

[anthony113]

try an inner bevel in photoshop using the blending options

 

[Nym]

I'd use a Inner Shadow, it gives the feeling that the button is really being pressed down.

 

[JasonElise1983]

i like your second option. Really plays into that gel thing, that only part of it is pressed, just like if you pressed a rubber ball. It only looks pressed where you touched it.

 

[OutThere]

I'd use a Inner Shadow, it gives the feeling that the button is really being pressed down.

I played around for a while (actually without reading your post), and came up with this, using an inner shadow: