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I am trying to replicate this border button effect (the gradients, fill color and shadows; forget about the content of the icon). I've already tried to achieve it but I am struggling

Safari Btn

Can you give me a way to replicate it straight away or some advices?

Thanks in advance!

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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we are not a tutorial-on-demand website, we ask you to show some effort and we'd rather explain where your process is wrong than give a quick step-by-step. Please edit your question to include this information.
    – AndrewH
    Commented Sep 28, 2018 at 20:28
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    It's easier to figure it out if you sort of break it apart in your head. Like basic shapes and stuff. Like we got: grey circle, blue inner circle with gradient, hightlights and shadows on the grey border... etc. Then you get multiple easy to google questions, rather than "how to make this thing". Like "how to make a circle". I mean honestly there might even be a tutorial for this exact icon, but the point is you can pretty much figure out anything if you first break it down. Also, it's better to ask those questions here because I think this could be like a ~1hour video tutorial...
    – Joonas
    Commented Sep 28, 2018 at 20:36
  • Thanks Joonas! I fully understant your point Andrew and it's right, the truth is that I've already spend like 4 days trying to achieve that effect but I am struggling, and for make it easily for everybody I decided not to show my 6 versions of the effect, anyway thanks, I will have that in mind
    – Angel
    Commented Sep 28, 2018 at 20:55
  • I realized you just wanted the edge, so I decided given an answer.
    – Joonas
    Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 0:50

2 Answers 2

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So I tried to condense this as much as possible to further show I would break this down personally, without writing a book about it.

  1. Base Circle shape layer
  2. Outer glow Layer style
  3. Drop Shadow Layer style
  4. Feathered higlights Brush tool with a soft round brush (roun brush with 0 hardness)
    • These are all in a Clipping Mask with the base circle.
  5. Dark swooshes Brush tool with a soft round brush (roun brush with 0 hardness)
    • I repeated these steps for all the shadows.
      1. Took a selection from the outer circle shape
      2. I used Quickmask (Q) and Free Transform (T) to make the selection right size. For the most part I just downsized it. For some of them I widened it a bit.
      3. Brushed in some black
      4. Deselected (Cmd+D)
      5. Then Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... to soften the edge

Gif:

enter image description here

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  • You are awesome! thanks for making those steps! Here is what I got i.imgur.com/HTIiDjG.png I need more practice on those gradients but Im on it, thanks again
    – Angel
    Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 7:27
  • @Angel, it is very close. A little refinement woldn’t hurt. Step 3 could use some Choke. It’s a little soft. Step 4 top and bottom highlights could be a bit more feathered. So larger brush. Looking at my result, the top one is a little too small there as well. Ends too abruptly. — If you placed the innards on top of that, it would look very close the original. If you aren't 100% satisfied, you might want to place the original next to yours and really analyze each element to see where it's off.
    – Joonas
    Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 9:10
  • About brushing the highlights and stuff... It may be easier to do some of the finer details if you lower the brush opacity to somewhere around 10-40 depending on how strong the effect needs to be. I'd maybe try similar opacity with the eraser tool on the dark swooshes.
    – Joonas
    Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 9:15
  • Okay, here's another try i.imgur.com/vHVZeal.png This is kind of meticulous and spend too much time in it, with practice I will become faster like you
    – Angel
    Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 19:58
  • You know, @angel, I think you might benefit from making it the same size as that original. You could perhaps just scale up the original and work off of that. Or you could just forget about the original and try to figure out how you could make it look more round. I think the sides especially look fairly flat. Or.. a little like a tear shape where the inner edge is thicker than the outer edge. I'm sure the heavy stroke around the whole thing doesn't help. That could be a little smaller and softer or on a larger scale, maybe even a soft inner glow.
    – Joonas
    Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 21:01
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If you can accept something which is a plausible ring, but not an exact copy and you can use Illustrator, then you can get the result in a minute:

enter image description here

The shape in the left (=a circle + a rectangle, united in the pathfinder panel) has got 3D effect Revolve. See the effect dialog. The shading can be adjusted by playing with the lights. I inserted 2 extra lights to get enough highlights.

The small parts at 12 a'clock can also be created as revolutions. There's another ring and a sphere.

The parts can be copied and pasted to Photoshop in high res for fine tuning. Often contrast must be added because Illustrator easily makes too dark shading.

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  • Very nice! It's a shame I can't accept this answer as well, I've tried and this it what I got i.imgur.com/UC9CeSY.png We need a more precise way to move those lights tho, maybe with values. Anyway, thanks for letting me know that this possible within Ai! it's interesting that feature
    – Angel
    Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 7:31

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