HinaPoTioa

Simple Plastic Tab

Plain and simple, but it can look good when used properly. Here’s a little plastic tab effect that you can master in under 2 minutes.

Create a new document with a white background and add a new layer. Set your foreground color to #eeeeee.
Now take the rounded rectangle tool and set the radius to 10px. Set the type to “Fill Pixels” and draw a rectangle slightly taller than your finished tab, and the same width.
Now use the selection tool to cut off the bottom of the tab, so that it’s the proper height and square at the bottom.
In the layers palette, click on the “Lock Transparency” icon and now, with your foreground color still set to #eeeeee, set your background color to #c1c1c1. Using the gradient tool, with the gradient type set to “Foreground to Background” fill the shape we’ve created from top to bottom with the light grey gradient. Uncheck “Lock Transparency.”
Ctrl+Click on the layer to load the selection, now create a new layer and fill the selection with white. Using the arrow keys, nudge your selection down 3 picels and hit delete. Now set the layer transparency to 70%.
Going back to the layer below the highlight, right click on the layer in the layers palette and select “Blending Options.”
Click on stroke, and set it to 1px, outside, #cdcdcd.
Now, go to the drop shadow style and add a drop shadow with a distance of 3, a size of 3 and an opacity of 35%. Everything else can stay at default values.
There you have it, a quick plastic tab in under two minutes.