Making an Aqua Button

In this solution, I'll show you how to make the brightly colored, glassy buttons that originated from Apple's Aqua interface many years ago, and since then have come to be affectionately known as "aqua buttons."

Solution

1. Start with a rounded vector button. We're going to be adding a gradient overlay to it, so its color's unimportant -- use any color you like! The first step is to apply a gradient overlay to our button. Open the Layer Style dialog by clicking on the Add a layer style button at the bottom of the Layers palette and selecting Gradient Overlay from the menu that appears.
   Applying a gradient overlay to the button (click to view image)

2. In the dialog, set the angle to 90° (shown above) and click on the Gradient patch to display another dialog for the Gradient Editor, shown here.
   Changing the gradient settings (click to view image)
   

3. Let's change our gradient settings using the Gradient Editor. Double-click on each of the tiny color patches below the gradient bar to change its color. Create an aqua-to-blue gradient by setting the color of the patch on the left to aqua (#3cc9e2), and the color of the patch on the right to blue (#1160c2). Set the Location of the aqua patch to 25%, and click OK to apply the gradient.


4. Back in the Layer Style dialog, click on Inner Glow. Set the Blend Mode to Normal, the Opacity to 50%, and the Size to about 10px, depending on the size of your button. Click on the color patch and change the color to a dark blue, as shown in the example below -- I've used #003298.
   Applying an Inner Glow layer style (click to view image)
   
   
5. Next, we'll apply a slight glowing effect. Click on Outer Glow. Change the Blend Mode to Normal, the Opacity to 50%, the Spread to 4%, and the Size to 5px (you may need to tweak these settings to suit the size of your button). Change the color patch to a bright aqua color, as shown below -- I've used #00bae8.
   Applying the Outer Glow layer style (click to view image)
   
   
6. Click OK to apply all the styles.


7. To create the button highlight, duplicate the button layer by pressing Ctrl-J in the Layers palette (Command-J on a Mac). Turn off the Outer Glow and Inner Glow styles for this layer by clicking on their corresponding eye icons, as shown here.
   Turning off the layer styles of the highlight (click to view image)