Bevel Lines and woodgrains

Found this? photoshop tutorial which showed me how to fix two little issues I was having. Realistic woodgrain, AND “bevel lines”!?

The bevel line effect is exactly what I was looking for, and I don’t want to forget how to do it, so here it is:

Green-Bevel

Woodgrain_bevel

The effect is one that I’ve been searching for, but couldn’t seem to find the right keywords. It’s really super-simple to do!

  1. Create parallel white/black lines on their own layer. (Just a few px wide)
  2. Gaussian-Blur the new layer. (Radius 1.5 has worked perfectly so far.)
  3. Set the layer blending mode to “Soft Light”

And it’s Just That Easy! This is a technique I’v been looking for to create nice smooth buttons-on-a-bar.