This will (hopefully) describe an easy way of getting decent looking softbars with PSP9.

This is written for rikard_sweden at M9 but I wrote this so most people would understand it,
so I'm sorry if some parts are obvious or overly explained.

I've set up my toolbars in PSP to look like this:

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Here you find the image I made in this tutorial:

Layered:
http://www.skorpan.dk/tut/Image1.pspimage

Finished:
http://www.skorpan.dk/tut/Image1.png

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First off, create a new image.

 Brings up this dialog:

In this example I’m doing a softbar for the S700 and that softbar is 240 pixels wide and 30 pixels high,
for the K700 change that to 176x26.

 

 

That will give you this:
The checkered pattern is to indicate that the area is transparent.

 

 

I find the rulers to be very helpful and if you want to activate them go here:
(If they’re not set to show pixels, change that in “file”-“preferences”-“general program preferences” – under the tab “units”).

 

 

Now we’ll make a selection which will make the softbar in the shapes of buttons,
but this of course not necessary, it all depends on how you want the softbar to look like.

 Choose the selection tool:

 

And use these settings:

 

 

 

 Start off in the upper left-hand corner and drag to lower right, stop at about 100 pixels.
(Stop at 75-80 or so if you're doing a softbar for K700).

You get this:

 

 

 Now we'll fill the selected area with a gradient color.

Pick the fill tool:

These settings will do nicely:

Now go to "materials":

To know what everything represents just hold the mouse over it and it will show.
Click on the blue circular gradient (foreground color):

This will pop up:

:

Here you choose the type of gradient/pattern/solid color you want to use.
We'll use the duotone dark blue in sunburst style.

Fill the selected area of the picture and you get this:

Step one complete!

Now we'll create a new raster layer:

Brings this one up:

Default settings is fine.

This brings an overlay on top of the image we're working on.

Since this is pretty important I'll take the basics.

This far we only have two layers, but as you go along you
can easily find yourself with 50 layers. To know which layer is which
you can name them to match their content or just hold the mouse over
the layer and an image will show what that layer contains (like in the pic above).

The eye represents if the layer is visible or not, simply click the eye to turn a layer off.
To the right of the eye is the transparancy-bar. Default is always full visibility (no transparency)
but that is easily changed by choosing level of transparency in that bar. We'll do that later.

You see that "Raster 2" is chosen (marked blue), that means, all that is done is done only in that layer.
Raster 1 (the filled blue color) is now uneffected by whatever we do.
There's much more to layers but this will get you by.

Now we'll start working on raster 2:

We will fill the same selection with a pattern:
Go to "materials" again. And click the foreground color:

This time, pick the tab "pattern":

 

We'll choose the pattern "feathers":
Note the settings: Angle: 0 and Scale: 10.

 

 

Once "feathers" is chosen, click OK.

Now choose the fill-tool and fill the selected area of the picture.
You'll get this: And don't worry, the blue we filled in earlier isn't gone, it's just underneath what we just did.

 

 

Creat another new raster layer.

The last thing we'll do is add a glass effect.
Choose the selection tool:

 

 

In the settings:

 

 

Change from "rounded rectangle" to "rectangle".

Now we will de-select about half of our selection we made before.
We want only the top half of out previous selection to remain.

Place the mouse in the middle of the image outside of the selection,
hold down "ctrl" and make a selection from the middle of the picture to the bottom left.

That will give you this:

 

 

Good to remember: "ctrl" de-selects and "shift" adds to the selection.

Now go to "materials" once again.

This time, change style to "linear" and pick the gradient "fading white".
Note the Angle:0.

 

 

Once there, click OK.
Take the fill-tool for the last time.
And fill the remains of our selection.

You will have this:

 

 

You can now remove the selection by hitting "ctrl"+D.

Now it's time to start working with the transparency of the different layers.

We now have three layers;
Layer 1 is the blue which acts like background.
Layer 2 is the dark pattern.
Layer 3 is the white fading.

This example was easy when it comes to playing with transparency, because it only contains three layers.
But I think the effect is pretty good anyway.

On layer 2, set the transparency-bar to 60 and that's all it takes:

 

 

It will give you this:

 

 

In my opinion, a great looking softbar, soon finished.

If you wish to save the file with the layers intact, save it now as a "pspimage".

To finish things off we'll copy the image we made and place it on the right side too:
First we need to merge the layers:

 

 

After this, select the entire image like this:

 

 

Now, press "ctrl"+C to copy the selection and then "ctrl"+E to paste as new selection.
Now place the floating button on the right side and make sure it's exactly positioned.
The rulers now come in handy. In my image the button is placed 1 pixel from the top and 1 pixel from the side.
Yours might differ since your selection might be slightly different from mine.
If you find it hard to position, just scroll the mouse-wheel to zoom in on the image.

This is the finished result:

Save the file as .png and you're done!

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This is only one way of doing it. But I think this is the easiest way.
The combinations are endless and the important thing is experimentation!
This obviously takes some time but it's the only way to go if you ask me.

To do the statusbar and highlights, just use the same procedure as above.
Just make new images in the right sizes and don't use the same button-selection as we did in this tutorial.

And to make a see-through highlight, just make all layers somewhat transparent.

On a general note I highly recommend the Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000 plugins which will help you improve
your images with many great effects.

Hope this was understandable and good luck with the softbar-manufacturing!

/dr_megabyte @ mobile9.com