Posted on April 1st, 2008
Written by John and filed into the Basics, Design, Web Layouts, Effects category.

Now I am going to make the first part of the glow to make this menu look like it is floating, so start another new layer. Get your elliptical marquee tool and draw a shape like this with a bright blue color. The color I used is #0089B8.

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In the image above you can see my shape is under the other layers.

In the image above you can see the shape under my other layers on the canvas, here is a screenshot of it under the layers on my layers palette.. Just grab the layer and drag it down:

Now we want to apply a gaussian blur to it by going to filter>>blur>>gaussian blur on the menu.

Set it to a radius of 40 pixels.

My result so far:

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Now I am going to add a shadow to finalize the floating effect using my elliptical marquee tool again, except change the color to black.

Start a new layer and make a shape like this under the menu layer:

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Now apply another gaussian blur with a radius of 6.2 pixels

Now you should have something similar to this:

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That looks pretty good if you ask me… Now I am going to add a few more touches to finalize the menu. First draw a little white box that your menu’s font will fit
in like this:

It doesn’t matter where you put it on your menu because we will be duplicating them and moving them around in a our next few steps.

Now set the little white box to a 20% opacity, then duplicate the layer four more times. Move them beside each other so that you see a little line in between them like this:

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Center them on your menu the best you can.

Next I am going to add font on each box for the menu text. I am using a font called Zurich CN BT but you can use any font because it will have the same effect.

Here is my font on the menu:

Now add a drop shadow with blending options using these settings:

Now here is the result of that:

Then all you have to do is duplicate that text and move it to another block, also changing the text to say what you want on your menu.

Here is my final menu:

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