Create the Glass Shelf Dock from Leopard OS in Photoshop
In the new MAC OS X Leopard operating system, the application bar has a new, sleek look. This tutorial will show you how to create the Glass Shelf Dock used for the operating system.
What We Will Be Creating
For those of you not aware of what the Leopard operating system looks like, you can see it here. The image below will give you an idea of what we will be creating.
Wallpaper
The background wallpaper we are going to be using is shown below. A larger version can be found here.
Setting the Guides
Now that we have all the materials we need to get started, and we have an idea of what the Glass Shelf Dock looks like, lets begin to create our own inside of Photoshop.
Begin by Creating a New Document (I used a 1280x800px document) and placing the wallpaper into the Background Layer.
Make sure your rulers are enabled. If they aren’t, navigate to View > Rulers(Ctrl+R). Also make sure your guides are enabled at View > Show > Guides(Ctrl+;). Now lets drag guides out from the vertical ruler to 140px and 1140px. Then drag a guide from the horizontal ruler to 760px.
Creating the Shelf
Grab your Rectangular Marquee Selection Tool(M) and select the 1000x60px area in between your guides. Then set your colors as such:
Foreground color #777777
Background color #555555
Create a new layer. Then grab your Linear Gradient Tool and select the “Foreground to Background” preset gradient. While holding shift, drag your cursor from the top of the selection to the bottom.
Create two more vertical guides at 170px and 1110px. Now lets go to Edit > Transform > Perspective and while holding shift, drag the top left corner to your 170px guide.
Perspective Tip
Holding shift will transform both sides of your object at the same time, so that they stay symmetrical.
Adding Effect to the Shelf
Change the opacity of your Shelf Layer to 90% or 80%. Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail for the Shelf Layer to make a selection of it. Create a new layer. Then, grab your Pencil Tool and create a 2px line with the color #cccccc across the bottom of the selection and set the opacity of the layer to 85%. Then, above that, create a 1px line on a new layer with the color #000000 and set the opacity to 25%.
Hiding the Guides
We don’t need the guides that we created anymore, so you can either drag them off the screen or hide them by going to View > Show > Guides
Once again, Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail for the Shelf Layer to make a selection of it. Then, create a Foreground to Transparent Gradient about 30px wide on the left and right side of the selection on a new layer. Change the opacity to 10%.
Creating the Glossy Effect
To add more effect to the shelf, lets add a curved gloss to it. Create a new layer and grab your Pen Tool(P). Make sure that your pen is set to paths.
Pen Tool
Before proceeding, you may want to read the tutorial Pen Tool Basics – Custom Shapes to better understand how to create the shape in the next step, since I will not be explaining how to use the pen tool step by step.
Create a path similar to the highlighted area below. Then, right click while you still have your pen tool selected and click make selection. Make sure feather radius is set to 0px.
Grab the Foreground to Transparent Gradient Tool and set your foreground color to #FFFFFF. Then, hold shift and drag the gradient from the bottom of the selection to the top of the selection. You should now have something like below.
Adding Icons
Bring in the first icon that you want to add and place it about halfway up the height of the shelf. Duplicate(Layer > Duplicate Layer…) it and flip it vertically(Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical). Drag it down until the top of the flipped version is touching the bottom of the normal version. Then, change the opacity to 25%.
Adding Shadow
Some people would stop here thinking that the effect is done. However, not only does the actual operating system have shadows for the icons, I would add them even if it didn’t. They help to create more depth and a greater effect.
To add the shadow, duplicate(Layer > Duplicate Layer…) your icon layer and drag the new layer under the original. Fill your layer with black Edit > Fill… Use: Black(Shift+F5). Then change the size of your icon using Edit > Free Transform(Ctrl+T). Drag the top middle box until the top of your icon matches the top of the shelf.
Once you have this accomplished, we need to blur the shadow. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 1.5px. Then change the opacity to 25%.
Repeat this process with more icons
Creating the Fading Rectangles
To create the fading rectangles, follow the same steps we used to create the shelf. Make a white rectangle and transform it using perspective. Delete sections of the rectangle, making them get smaller as they get farther away. Then lower the opacity to 25%.
Creating the Orb
Create an oval 10x4px using the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Then apply the following Layer Styles(Layer > Layer Styles).
The Final Result
We now have all of the objects and effects that we need to complete our design. Lets take a look at the final result.
Creating Something Unique
Experiment with your own styles, colors, and effects to create something that stands out and looks unique. Following a tutorial is one thing, but applying the techniques you learn to something original is on a whole different level.
If you’d like, feel free to grab the Glass Dock PSD to get a bet understanding of how I accomplished this look!
77 Comments
thanks for tutorial. Love it, simple and effective :D
Flag as inappropriateThats awsome Thanx :)
Flag as inappropriateThis is really good, thank you very much for sharing.
Flag as inappropriateOh! Coooooooooooool.
Flag as inappropriateI Like This Post.
Hey. I am having trouble making this (I know, Im a little dumb, but im new to photoshop) . I was wondering if you could send me the .psd file so I can see what you did. This would help a bunch! Thanks :)
Flag as inappropriateawesome :)
Flag as inappropriatehey i wanna know if i can make this same dock on a blackberry theme composer tell me
Flag as inappropriateOnce again a really nice post. Such a simple tutorial that can be implemented into other areas of design not just for mimicking the snow leopard interface. I’ve downloaded the Zip file attached and will have a look at how you did it in more depth. Thanks for sharing.
Flag as inappropriateGreat for share these. Thank you for your share.
Flag as inappropriateHey, thanks so much for this tutorial. It’s simple, yet descriptive. I used it to make my page in the yearbook! Keep making more!
Flag as inappropriateThanks for the tutorial. I will try to doit for windows desktop
Flag as inappropriateits very nice. Great post35
Flag as inappropriateits very nice. Great post22
Flag as inappropriateits very nice. Great post16
Flag as inappropriategreat i never seen before.
Flag as inappropriateThank you so much for all the effort it took to prepare this really useful and helpful tut! It helped me tons on a project :)
Flag as inappropriateGreat tutorial! I hope I’ll try to apply this to a project very soon. Thank you.
Flag as inappropriateThank you so much…it was one the best tutorial..awesome….
Flag as inappropriateHey…
Great tutorial… I have a Mac…Running Snow Leopard actually… But it is effectively the same look.
The dock is actually slighlty less gray than tha… Its more white, and as Paul said, it reflects the image above.
Otherwise great tutorial… Thanks
Flag as inappropriateGreat tutorial man! Very usefull!
Flag as inappropriateAwesome!
Flag as inappropriateI’m gonna use this as a background in my object dock :)
Cool!! you guys are Really gud and thats a neat tutorial.
Flag as inappropriateam new in graphics bt nw i think i’ll advance with thie tutorial. hey how do u these effects together?
Real Cool one! Very simple and easy to understand.
Flag as inappropriatethat’s great
Flag as inappropriateAwesome tutorial… Just wondering if you might have any other images with shadows to use. Something like an email icon, etc.
Flag as inappropriateThis tutorial is useful, very useful, this can be made into a nice flashy web page… Thanks man
Flag as inappropriateVery good tutorial! I love Apple designs and artworks!
Flag as inappropriateHi Tyler – I have come accross your great tutorial while searching for a flash version of your work. The flash version I have found are no where near as good as your work. Did anyone ever take your work and put it into flash?
Flag as inappropriatethanks this tutorails
Flag as inappropriategood job helps a lot thnks
Flag as inappropriateSorry I meant “most of”, I’m venezuelan please never mind my language mistakes.
Flag as inappropriateWanna help me? give me a smiling coin step by step I have tried unsuccessfully, perhaps it’s easy I guess I must attend a course. I believe desing is a rare gift but mostly of us want to see it as a process to develop. That’s where we fail though.
Flag as inappropriateGreat tutorial Tyler – I highly recommend a pt 2 tutorial involving a JavaScript framework like jQuery. You could make it very fun/interactive with the animate() function =D.
Flag as inappropriateHi. Great tutorial. As a mac user myself this tutorial could have been a great intro on how to change the look of the dock in OS X. Unfortunately you have not explained how to split the images up so that they can be used for this. I have played around with it and it’s really not very hard to do. Don’t know if this would be the place to publish a guide for that, but your tutorial would be great as an intro to the graphical part of creating your own dock. I would be happy to help out with making such a tutorial if you guys are interested.
Toby out.
Flag as inappropriateRatings 8
Flag as inappropriateVery Nice
Unfortunately, i dont like mac. But i like your creativity in presenting.
Flag as inappropriateI admired ! subscribing to the RSS now :)
Flag as inappropriateMachead.
Flag as inappropriateYou might wanna try to turn on on extras and rulers in the view menu. Then you can drag new guides from the page rules on the top and left of your photoshop window. good luck. :-)
you have wonderful view
Flag as inappropriatethanks 4 tutorial
The tutorial is really good but I cannot start, the guides drop-down button is blacked out so I cannot access guides. Does anyone have a way to get them to work?
Flag as inappropriateI have checked that all of them are enabled.
Kind Regards,
machead
thank u very much this is awesome tutorial mate…u r da best
Flag as inappropriateExcellent tut.
Thanks mate!
Flag as inappropriatereally cool stuff you added there
keep it up
thx
Flag as inappropriateSalam Aleykum.
Flag as inappropriateThx for the great created tutorial! Well done:)
I actually made this with flash in mind, I figured someone would be inspired to create a navigation menu styled like the Leopard OS in flash.
Flag as inappropriate@LOSWL:
u can say that again, might be able to use this tutorial for flash design thanks dude :)
Flag as inappropriateExcellent tutorial, love the attention to details :o)
Flag as inappropriateGreat tutorial! The rollover images really help.
I cant see myself ever using this, but its good to help me learn the little things.
Flag as inappropriateThanks for that information Paul. In that case, simply make a copy of the background, flip it vertically, mask it to the same size of the shelf, and lower the opacity to around 10% or so. It would be placed right about the shelf layer.
Flag as inappropriateGreat tutorial, but there’s one little accuracy issue. The shelf is not actually transparent. If you look closely, you’ll see that the bit behind the shelf is a reflection of whats above it.
Flag as inappropriateIncredible Tutorial Tyler! Way to go on your very first tutorial with us at Tutorial9!
We really do have some talented authors here! Keep it up mate!
Flag as inappropriate