This tutorial is aimed to teach you how to shade shapes.There are many ways to approach this effect, so you can use any of them. I tried to write more practical and hope that this tutorial will be useful.
First, open a new image with any size you want, but I used 720* 576 pixels.Than we have to draw our shape. I started from a circle, because the shading technique of a circle is a little different than the shading technique of other shapes.OK. We opened our image than fill the layer, which we are going to name as circle with white color, or just press the D, than press Ctrl+ Backspace.Get the Elliptical Marquee Tool press Shift+ Alt (this will make our ellipse more circle). Than choose for foreground color darker and for background color lighter color. Than get the gradient tool, linear gradient, choose foreground to background and fill our circle from up to down.
Open a new layer and name it not circle over than the layer where we filled our circle or simply circle layer. Change the foreground color for white and select gradient tool, foreground to transparent. Go to Select/ Modify/ Contract. I used for contract 4 pixels. And Select/ Feather or Alt+ Ctrl+ D. Feather by 5 pixels. Than fill our circle up to down till the middle of the circle.
By now your image should look like this: If you want to finish just now, it is your business but to have more 3D like shape we are going to work on our circle a little more. OK. If you got a circle like mine on the picture you can continue.Again choose circle layer and change the layer style blending options, inner shadow. Opacity 15%, Angle 90, use global light. Distance 5, Choke 15, Size 5.
Create a new layer above all other layers and rename it to double inner shadow, try to name your layers it will be easier to work with. Than merge all layers or just press Ctrl+ Shift + Alt+ E. Than change the layer style blending options, inner shadow. Opacity 50%, Blend Mode- Overlay, Angle 90, use global light. Distance 5, Choke 20, Size 20. If you want, you can play with these settings.That is all by now for a circle and by now if you followed my technique you should have something like this:
OK. If you are still with me we can start shading other shapes.Follow the tips written above and get the rectangular marquee tool and do it just like a circle till the blending options, hope you got it. Than you going to have something like the picture below: You can still play with the settings.But if you want to have the rectangle without sharp edges, it is quite easy just when you are about to make a rectangle go to Select/ Modify/ Smooth. I used 7 pixels. And follow the steps that were used for a green rectangle above. And got this:Hope that the tutorial was not so difficult to understand, just play with the settings. And here are my other shaded shapes: