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Button It
Luckily, with the playback buttons along the top, it's easy to make one and copy it six times. Start by creating a rounded rectangle that's 42 pixels wide by 28 pixels high, with a corner radius of 4 px. Color doesn't matter. Assign a Brushed Metal effect using the Circular Steel preset. After that's done, apply Impact's Glass filter, using the settings shown in Figure 17. Note in the Lighting tab overlay that I assigned a Sky – Sun and Clouds reflection map to the button. Reflection maps are a nifty part of the Glass filter.
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Figure 17 Applying the Glass filter to a button.
To give the buttons some depth, I added a slight Bevel and Emboss layer style. Figure 18 shows the settings used.
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Figure 18 A Pillow Emboss.
After that, I used the Lasso tool and the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tools to create the icons on the buttons. Holding Shift while clicking with the Polygonal Lasso constrains the selection to 45-degree angles, so it was easy to create a triangular Play icon. Then I filled the selection area with a blue of #255aaf and set the layer's blending mode to Multiply. I used Shift and the Elliptical Marquee to create the record icon and filled it with a red of #ed1c24 and again set the layer's blending mode to Multiply. If you group the button and icon layers it's even easier to copy them and make more buttons. Repeat as necessary to create the remaining buttons.
The round button with the musical note on it was created using another Glass filter effect, with settings shown in Figure 19. By creating a 50 by 50 pixel selection with the Elliptical Marquee and not applying a fill to it, it's possible to achieve a translucent effect. The note itself is a preset you can find under the Custom Shape Tool, with a blue fill of #255aaf and the layer's blending mode set to Multiply.
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Figure 19 Glass button.
To complete the look of this button, I assigned an Inner Shadow layer style with the settings shown in Figure 20, and a 1-pixel stroke with a gray color of #646363.
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Figure 20 Setting the button's traits.
Finally, the red glowing doodad on the left side of the interface is a rounded rectangle with a color of #ff0000, a width of 50, and a height of 30, with 4 px radius corners and a Glass filter applied. Figure 21 shows the settings used.
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Figure 21 A glowing glass doodad.
Your interface should now somewhat resemble Figure 22. Text is next.
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Figure 22 Starting to shape up.