Thats a good idea about the warping Stu. I think it would work nicely in alot of situations.

I kinda figured Xara would do a good job of the plastic buttons. Probably alot quicker too. Although, one advantage photoshop has, is being able to write scripts for a series of repeatable steps. And another is being able to control the overall transparency of a layer. Xara can only control the transparency by individual object (or group). ALthough maybe you can do this in Xara X...I dont have it yet. In PS, you create the layer for the button and apply all the effects to that layer. You then control the transparency of that layer (which helps make the button more transparent) and then you can add a layer mask to that layer to make the inside of the button even more transparent. (ie everything in the layer becomes more transparent when you put grey to blackish pixels.

I dont know which ap would do this better...probably better in some aspects and not in others. At least in Xara, you can bitmap a layer and then apply transparency to it (both for the entire object and/or paritally with eliptical transparency...which would work similar to the mask I was talking about).

b