How To Create A Gel Capsule ...in Photoshop

[clagnol 0]

Whether you're into medecine as an art form, or you want to make gel buttons for your website, this tutorial is for you.

 

First, make your canvas somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 pixels by 300 pixels. We'll be working on a large scale, so you can always downsize it.

 

Now, choose whichever color suits your fancy. Since we're working with vectors, you can always change it according to whim. Use the rounded rectangle tool to imitate the shape of a capsule. I recommend you put "70 px" in the radius field in the toolbar at the top.

 

You should have something that looks like this:

 

Now you should right click on that layer, and select "Blending Options". Check the options "Inner Shadow" and "Drop Shadow". In the "Inner Shadow" options, make the distance 0 px, make the choke 10%, and make the size 50 px, or play around with these settings to suit your liking.

 

Under the "Drop Shadow" options, replace the default black with the same color as your capsule. For my example, I set the distance at 22 px, the spread at 24%, and the size at 38 px. Make sure "Global Light" is checked and set it to 90 degrees.

 

Now you should have something that looks approximately like this [but larger]:

 

Now comes the toughest part: adding a reflection. Use the ellipse tool to produce a long ellipse along the top edge of the capsule. It doesn't matter which color you use, because the next step is to change the fill value to "0". You should be able to find this field in the layers window near the opacity value.

 

Now go to the blending options menu for this new layer. Give it a "Gradient Overlay" and click on the default gradient in order to be taken to the "Gradient Editor". There are four nubs along the length of the default gradient. Click on the top left nub and change it's opacity to 0. Click on the bottom left nub and change it to the color white.

 

Now you need to rasterize this shape so that you can blur it. But first, you should duplicate and then hide the layer in case you decide to back-track later. Rasterization is available from the right-click menu of the layer, or from the "Layer" menu in the top toolbar. Now use a "Gaussian Blur" from the "Filters" menu under "Blur". Set the blur to 0.7 pixels. Now set the opacity of this layer to 60% and your capsule should look something like this:

 

If all you wanted was a gel cap, then you're done at this point. If you wanted to put text on your capsule, then you should use the text tool to do so. A font size of 36 px is about right, depending on your font, and don't be afraid to use the options in the "Character" window to tweak the width or height of your text. Because I forgot to install cool fonts on my laptop, I will be using Verdana.

 

You will change the fill value of the text to 0% and once again enter blending options. Select "Bevel and Emboss" and select the radio button which indicates "Down". You can change the other options, but I'm sticking with the default values for this tutorial. Change the opacity of the text until it looks right to you. I chose 45% and my capsule looks like this:

 

Now follow the instruction on my gel capsule, because you've just learned a cool trick.

[sachavdk 0]

Thats a pretty nice try. I had never thought of using the inside gradient for this but it has an awsome effect I think.Cool

[Saint_Michael 3]

aah so thats how it was done, now the question will you take the red one or the blue one.

[rvovk 0]

Very nice tutorial, I love blue color. Maybe shadow should be black with some opacity aplied, just a thought.