In this tutorial you will learn some great techniques to make a navigation bar in Photoshop. This navigation bar will be in blue, but you can easily change the colors to what you like. Here is a preview of how the navigation bar will turn out (you can make it longer or shorter if you like).

The Background of the Navigation Bar:

Ok, lets get started. First off, we want to create a new file to the size of 40px X 400px with a resolution of 72. (change the length to suit the width of your website). Check out the image below:

Next we want to create the background, this involves a few Photoshop layer styles and colors, but it’s quite easy. First we will select the whole canvas area and fill it with a color:

Next is the layer styles, double click the layer to get into this, then input the following settings:

Now the stroke:
Note; Make sure you set the position to the inside, otherwise you will not even see it.

Highlights of the Navigation Bar:

The highlights are a strip of white on the top of the navigation bar and the white to transparent gradient at the bottom.

I will start with the top strip of white. Simply find half way (20px down from the top) and then select all of that. Once selected, just fill it with white like this:

Now lower the opacity to 6%:

Next is the bottom highlight, simple do the same as the top highlight, but this time turn the opacity down to 40% and set the gradient overlay style on that layer to what you see below, to change the opacity on the gradient, click the top box where it has the preview, you will notice below the one with 0% opacity is white and the other with 100% is black:

Now you should have a navigation bar that looks like this:

Dividers and Text:

For the dividers simply draw with the pencil tool, two lines each 1px each. One in white and the other in black like so:

Now set the opacity to 57% and the blending mode to “Soft Light” on that specific layer:

It should now look like this:

Once you have done that, add some text and more dividers. I just used Arial for the font at 20pt. Here is my final work:

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