Melanie Reyes

Hello there! Welcome to my tutorial series. This time we will create a shiny and glossy icon same as the above. The logo inside can vary depending on your taste. For the purpose of this exercise, I used a custom shapes of Adobe Photoshop as our example. You can always use anything that you like; question mark, facebook logo, twitter logo, home icon, download icon, anything!

1. Start with a blank black document. Add a new layer. I will rename it base.

2. Select the Round Rectangle Tool. Change the radius (value is according to your preference.) to give us the desired rounded corners.

3. Draw the Round Rectangle on the base layer. Press shift key while doing so to give us a perfect square. Hit Ctrl + Enter, this will convert our shape’s path into a marquee selection. Fill it with #00599d

4. While the square is still in selection (with the dotted lines around our square still in active), Go to Go to Select Menu >> Modify >> Contract >> then enter a value on the contract by field.

5. Create a new layer (I named it “gradient”) and fill it with any color. We will give this gradient layer a “gradient” layer style. Let’s go ahead and click on the icon below and enter the following settings.

6. Create a new layer. I named it “white bottom”. Select your brush tool and choose the “Soft Round Pressure Size” for the brush options below the menu bar.

7. Click on the Layer Thumbnail of the “gradient layer” while holding the “ctrl”key. This will automatically select our original shape. Our goal is to remove excess brush tool outside our square. Just make sure that the highlighted layer is on the “white bottom” layer when we do the next step. Go to Select Menu >> Inverse or Ctrl + Shift + I. Hit Delete.

8. Change the Blending Mode of the “white bottom” layer. Choose “overlay” from the dropdown menu.

9. Add a new layer, I called it “shade top” this time. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Draw a selection at the top left corner of our square. Select the Paint Tool, fill the selection with white. Set the Blending Mode to “Overlay” and the opacity, 60%.

10. Go to Select Menu >> Inverse or Ctrl + Shift +I then Delete to delete excess element.
11. Also, go to “gradient layer and change the opacity into 79%.

12. Click on the Layer Thumbnail of the “base layer” while holding the “ctrl”key. Create a new layer, I called it “white highlight”. There should be already a selection as size as our “base layer”. Fill it with white.

13. Go to Select Menu >> Modify >> Contract >> then enter a value on the contract by field. Hit Delete.

14. Select the Eraser tool and choose the “Soft Round Pressure Size”. Delete softly/partly the bottom layer of our “white highlight” layer.

15. Select all our layers from “base to white highlight” and create a duplicate for all by right clicking it and selecting “duplicate layers…” from the option popup. Right click again, then merge.

16. Drag the “merged” layer below our base layer then hit “CTRL + T” or Transform. Right click the transform box, and choose Flip Vertically. Drag it at the bottom of our square image.

17. Select our eraser brush again and brush off the bottom part of our merged layer to give us a fade out effect. Decrease its opacity as well. We’re almost there!

18. Create a new layer, I will call it icon layer. Select the custom shape tool from the tool section. Choose your desired shape from the shapes on the drop down menu. Draw it inside our square box the hit “Ctrl + Enter”. Fill it with white.

19. Add a layer style to our icon layer. Choose Inner shadow and play with the below settings.

20. At last. You can select all the layers again (except our merged layer) and transform them as per your likings. Enjoy your new icon. Please come back again for future tutorials! 