This is my first tutorial so it is fairly simple and straight forward. This is as easy as it gets in Photoshop, but I think that this tutorial can yield some pretty cool results. I’m going to show you how to make a sleek, very clean navigation for your website.
Lets start with a 500×200 pixel canvas. I filled it in with a medium gray color.
Next, I used the marquee tool to get a rectangular selection (sorry for the difference in background colors, just ignore it)
Go ahead and fill that selection in with any color you want. Then, add the following layer styles.
I chose 2 light grays as a gradient overlay – darker in the bottom and a very, very, very light gray up top.
I threw in a drop shadow just to give the nav bar some depth. This step is completely optional.
I then added an inside stroke with a dark gray of 1 pixel
Finally, I threw in a very faint inner glow to give the bar some highlights.
You should hopefully have something looking somewhat like a nav bar by now.
Select the nav bar by command, or control, clicking on the thumbnail for your nav bar layer. This will select the entire bar. From there, go to Select>Modify>Contract and contract the selection by 2 pixels.
Make a new layer, fill in the selection with white. Then transform (Cmd+T) the white section so that it covers about half of the nav bar.
Lower the opacity of the white layer to about 25%. This is now our gloss for the nav bar.
Now let’s work on the selected page portion.
Start by making a selection as wide as you prefer. Fill it in with any color.
I then added the following layer styles. I chose the color blue as my selected page color. Feel free to choose any color scheme you would prefer – I have done this with yellow, red, orange, green, and blue and they all look great.
My gradient is a dark blue to a slightly lighter blue.
I then added just a very faint drop shadow.
Next came another very, very, faint inner glow.
Once you finish the layer styles, command click on your selected page layer to select it.Then go Select>Modify>Contract and contract the selection by 2 pixels.
Fill that selection in with white and then transform it so that it covers about half of the selected page layer.
Next, lower the opacity so that you can barely notice the white layer. Mine is set at 6%.
The last step is to add text. Use whatever font you like, I generally like to keep mine thin and small, but do whatever suits your preferences. I made my text a medium gray color.
To finish everything off, I added a dark gray text to the rest of the nav bar. Replace these words with whatever suits your needs.
That’s how to make a simple, yet sleek looking navigation bar in Photoshop.
For more Photoshop tutorials check out the new tutorial site, The Tutorialist.
Gary R. Hess
December 28, 2007 at 1:48 am
Thats a nice looking nav bar
Good work on the tutorial.
Shelley
January 3, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Hey, thanks for this tutorial!
Brian
January 3, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Thanks Gary. And no problem Shelley. More to come in the future
DVD
January 4, 2008 at 12:15 am
Looks Great and tutorial well explained !
KEEP IT UP!!!!
PiticStyle
January 4, 2008 at 4:51 am
Simple and beautiful! Thanks
hamery1
January 5, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Clear and simple explaination.
I love it, thanks for showing and sharing your great tutorial.
Brian
January 5, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Thanks Hamery1. Much appreciated.
Shelley
January 7, 2008 at 8:50 pm
What font was used?
Brian
January 7, 2008 at 8:53 pm
I used a premium font (costs some money) called Hypatia Sans. I got it for free when I bought PS CS3
drdcha
January 9, 2008 at 5:23 pm
good
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May 26, 2008 at 4:52 pm
really wonderful tutorial
thank you
Corbin
January 27, 2009 at 6:57 am
This has been the big help to since they invented computer made this look so hard bloody simple thanks for great tutorial all i got to do now is put it on my site and im up and runner thanks again
mshockey89
September 26, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Well I was looking through your tutorial but its seems, your missing a small detail, how do you use this wonderful new navbar in a webpage?
crankypants
January 18, 2010 at 11:06 pm
I would love to see the pics with this tutorial, however all your pics have disappeared…