Creating Professional Menu header

Introduction…

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a simple, yet effective navigation for your website. We will show you the steps on how to create it using Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

Download the PSD…

Don’t have time to do the tutorial, but would like to see the results? The PSD is available to anybody who would like to use it. You can download it here.

Lets get started…

1. First thing we need to do is create a new document. For the purpose of this tutorial, I have created a document size of 891×132.

2. We want to go ahead and unlock our background layer, so double click it to unlock it. Now that its unlocked, we can add Blending Options to it. To do so, right click the layer and choosing blending options from the menu and input the following:

3. Your document should look like this now, with a nice dark brown gradient:

4. Now we want to create our navigation bar. To do so create a selection similar to the following with your Rectangle Marquee Tool and fill it with white.

5. Go ahead and right click that layer and input the following blending options on that layer:

6. The background to your navigation should look something like this now:

7. We want to add a little 1px shine to the top of the navigation to give it a little bit more detail. Using your Marquee tool, create a 1 px selection similar to the following and fill it with white on its own layer above the rest.

**Note, you you most likely have to zoom in to get it exactly right. Use CTRL and + to zoom in (command on mac)

8. You can go ahead and deselect and then change the layer style to Soft Light and lower the opacity to about 43% and it will look something like this

9. Next thing we want to do is add the text that will represent the links in our navigational menu. I used Helvetica as my font of choice, and used these blending options on the font layers:

10. You should have something similar to this at this point:

11. Now what we need to do is create something to act as a divider for each link. To do so we will get our Marquee Tool out again. We want to make a 2 px selection like the following:

While on a new layer, fill that with white and then put in the following blending options:

12. This seems to be a little strong, so what we want to do is lower the opacity a bit on that layer to around 20% and you will have something that looks like this:

13. Now, just copy that layer and put them in between the other links and you’ll have something similar to the following

14. We now want to choose how we want active links to be represented. So, on a new layer above your navigation background, make a selection similar to the following and fill it with any color:

15. And on that newly created layer, input the following blending options:

16. Your document should be coming together now and will look like this:

Now we could stop there, but what we the fun in that be? Lets go ahead and add a search field.

17. Next thing we want to do is create another layer. With this new layer, create a selection similar to the following and fill it with black.

18. Now, right click that layer and input the following blending options:

19. Your search field will now have a little bit more detail on it, and will look something like this:

20. Next, we want to create the search button. So we want to use our Rounded Rectangle Tool from the Tools Pallet with a radius of about 5px and create a selection like the following:

21. Lets go ahead and add some blending options to that layer now

22. You will now have a dark green submit button.

24. We don’t want to stop there though. CTRL+Click the layer you just created to select the submit button. While keeping it selected, create a new layer above it and fill it with white. While selected, go to SELECT>MODIFY>CONTRACT and choose 1px. Then choose EDIT>CLEAR and you should have something like this:

25. Now, change the layer style to Soft Light, and the opacity to 47%

26. Now all you need to do is add a shine to the button to give it that fresh look, and it will look like this:

27. Thats it! Just add some text in various locations and your results may look something like this:

**If you have any problems, or have any questions about this tutorial. Please leave your comments and I will get back to you. Also, remember the PSD to this tutorial is available for download.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

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