Step 1

Make a new document (500px x 500px) and fill it in with a Sunburst style gradient (#1f2b2b – #3b585e). Add some noise (Gaussian, 7%).

Step 2

Make a selection like this one:

Fill it in with this gradient:

And set the blending mode to overlay.

Step 3

Add some text. I am choosing the letter “S”, font “Arial”, and size “400px”. For color, I am using this gradient I made.

Center it (of course):

Step 4

Important: Save the selection to the alpha channel before you deselect!

Invert the current selection (of the letter) and apply a drop shadow with the following settings (be sure to select “Shadow on New Layer”):

Drag the shadow layer above the text layer, or else you won’t see it. Now, do another drop shadow with with these settings:

Drag this shadow layer above all other layers.

Click image to see full layer list

Step 5

Make a new layer above the text layer (and under all the shadow ones) and load up the selection from the alpha channel. Then fill it in with the gradient we used for the background (same style also, Sunburst). Set the blending style to Burn. This gives it that nice deep pill style effect.

Step 6

Now make a new layer and place it just above the background layers (under the text layer, above the background/background gloss layers) and load up your selection again. Expand the selection by 5 pixels (Selections > Modify > Expand) and fill it in with #37636f.

Step 7

Now for a real trick I discovered by accident (clicked the wrong thing). Effects > 3D Effects > Inner Bevel. This is a effect highly overused, but used right, can give you a really cool effect. Use these settings:

Looks much better. Now I want to add a gloss to this. If you still have it selected, de-select a bottom portion with the Ellipse Selection tool (if it’s not selected, which is what I had, just load it up from the alpha channel and expand the selection by 5 pixels) and fill it in with a White-to-Transparent gradient and lower the opacity.

Great Scott! Your done! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned from it! Here is my layers, and below you can download the finished.pspimage file. Enjoy!

And our finished result!

Download the File(s) here!