Shiny, glassy buttons in eleven steps. I've used Photsoshop on a PC for this tutorial, but the idea is really the same for all setups. Basically you need a solid shape with clean lines, some lighting effects, and a good-looking vector shape to lay on top of the whole thing. Shape fonts area a great source for icons, from shopping carts to stereo control icons. They can be set to any size you'd like and are easy to switch out when making a full set of buttons.
As with any tutorial the exact numbers used are simply a suggestion, to familiarize you with the lighting techniques being used. The exact opacity percentages and the depths of your dropshadows will depend entirely on the shape, size and color of the button you create.
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| Make a circle using the ellipse tool.
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| Make a selection of the shape (Ctrl-click the layer on PC) and on a separate layer on top, fill the shape with a white-to-transparent gradient. The white should start in the top left corner of the stage rather than the shape, to prevent the white from being too heavy an overlay.
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| Make another layer and this time move the selection up, as shown in the screenshot.
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| Now (again for PC) shift-Ctrl-alt-click the shape layer again to select a shape similar to the one shown left. Fill that selection with white using the paint bucket tool.
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| Take the opacity of the layer down to about 25 and move the shape down 10 or so pixels, depending on the size of your shape.
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| Using the layer styles, set a 2 pixel gradient stroke around the main shape,
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| Place a white icon on the top layer and give it a light dropshadow at about 120 degrees.
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| Set a black outer glow around the button at about
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| Make a selection of the button and move it down to the right corner as shown to the left.
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| Shift-Ctrl-alt-click the shape again to make a diagonal crescent as shown to the left.
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| Fill the selected area with white and set the layer opacity to around 24%.
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