Make Aero Fly in Photoshop (Page 3)

Aero Type

Now you have the basis for any Aero style design. The only thing left is to add some Aero type.

1. Create a text area, type a title, and set the typeface to Arial Regular (Windows) or Helvetica Regular (Mac), about 36 pt, and a color of white.
2. Double-click the type layer to access the Layer Styles dialog, and give the type an Outer Glow with these options: Multiply, 25%, 0%, and black. In the Elements area set Softer, 20%, and 8px. Leave all other options at their defaults. Hit OK.

Outer Glow creates a soft drop shadow on type.

That’s all there is to making the Aero style–in ten minutes!

From here, you have numerous customization options. By using vector shapes rather than drawing with the Marquee tools and painting in pixels, shapes can be resized infinitely without loss of quality. Note: If you resize rounded corner boxes disproportionately, their corners will distort. Remember to reset their corner radii to avoid distortion.

Since Layer Styles dynamically adapt to the size and shape of their layer’s content, the styles we applied will always work. Though you may need to tweak the style settings for different types, sizes, and shapes of objects. Experiment!

You can also create white boxes in addition to, or in place of, charcoal boxes; the Aero Glass style uses both white and charcoal inner shapes.

Though Aero interface elements like the boxes we created are strictly glass, charcoal, and white, judicious use of color can really make your designs stand out–note the clock’s second hand in my finished Aero illustration (below). Think of the outer box as a pane of glass; other, solid color containers and text can be mounted on that pane. Inner shapes may be charcoal, white, or more glass, and they can hold any type of object–text, graphics, and so forth–set in any color.

The completed Aero Glass style illustration.

To see how I built the clock, or to get a little more hands on with this tutorial, download my PSD project file (1.7 MB, .ZIP).

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