Need to change a ready-made roll-over button

**eJM** · 01:53 PM

I am starting a forum with vBulletin and got a very nice style from a German site, including the style graphics in GIF and the header.psd so I can edit the logo and other elements. I've not had too much trouble with most of the editing (I'm certainly no graphic artist nor a web designer and I don't know very much about PhotoShop CS), but I ran into a snag editing the roll-over buttons in the header.

You can see what I have here --> http://forums.themadmodder.com/cmps_index.php

I edited the Home button today -- just the text. I "Saved for the Web..." and got a lot of GIF files in an image folder. However, the original GIFs for the buttons are composed of, for instance, a bg_nn.gif and a bg1_nn.gif, but my edited set had only one bg_nn.gif.

Don't know what I did wrong 'cause I'm a rank n00b when it comes to PS. I was hoping one of you could tell me what I could do to make the buttons as they should be. You can see the original action on roll-over with the other buttons. I just uploaded a second copy of my edited home button with the roll-over name, which is why it doesn't even roll over.

Thanks for any assistance. I hope in time I will get the courage to try designing a new style all my own.

Grump
[Edit]Never mind, I got it figured out. Thank you.[/Edit]

**eJM** · 01-21-2005, 02:23 PM

In case anyone else is having a similar problem, I'll explain what I did. I am NOT an expert, so even my solution could be wrong. But it works well for me.

I found that there is an effect in the original PSD file on the button that creates an effect on the button triangle. In the Layers panel I found the effect for the triangles. One of the effects was "inner shadow". When inner shadow was on, the triangle appeared dark, when I turned it off, it got bright (no shadow covering the green). So, I made my font and text edits (using the same Layers panel) and Saved for Web... with the shadow on and again with shadow off.

Of course, I had to name the sets appropriately so that they could overwrite the original files when I uploaded them to my server. It turned out the whole process was relatively simple, even for a rank n00b like me. But that's not to say this isn't a difficult program to learn. I think part of my problem was being intimidated by the complexity of it -- and it being the middle of the night didn't help matters.

Here's an animation of my results:

I've had a chance to cruise the forums a bit and it looks pretty friendly and informative, so I'm stickin' around. I am glad this problem is behind me though.

Grump