Preview:

The sleek navigation bar tutorial
in this tutorial will learn how to create a sleek and cool looking web 2.0ish Navigation bar using Photoimpact 12 it also can be done in Photoimpactpro 11,10,9,XL as far as i remember.

Note the images shown look blury because they were resized to fit the width of this site.

i'll try my best to make it as easy as possible but you should have at least basic knowledge of where the tools are.
here is the outcome of this tutorial.

Step:
1) open a new image with width of at least 900px the high should be less then 44px

2)Create a rounded rectangle 737px wide and 42px high. Note: do no use the resizing tool to adjust the width because photoimpact for some reason wont let you adjust the corners after resizing a rounded rectangle or any other shape. so the best thing would be to use the ruler.
you should have something like this.

3) In the Tool Settings-Path adjust the roundness to 45,example shown below.

4) now using the gradient fill add the color HEX #2786CE for the left box and HEX #044E86 for the right one

5) add a border width of 1px and the color HEX#0E4977

you should have something like this by now

6) add the text for the buttons that you will use and make sure they have equal space between each other. i used the font Trebuchet MS

7) add black shadow to the text settings should be as follow

should look like this by now

8) now will crate the separator by using the line tool before drawing the line zoom in to about 600% so we can see what were doing, then select the line tool and draw a line with the color HEX #09558F and then duplicating that line and changing the color to #227FC5 and placing that beside the first line.
this is how it should look zoomed in.

9) duplicate the separator and and them between each button like this

10) now to crate the glass effect, will be duplicating the rounded rectangle and adjusting the color to white, also don't forget to remove the border of the duplicated rectangle as well.

11) Using the Edit Path Object tool will change the shape of the white rounded rectangle by
deleting the two points using the "Delete Point"

After deleting them both it should look like this

12) still in the edit path object now will need to straiten the awkward line by first selecting the "Pick Point" tool and clicking on the awkward line then on
"Convert curve segment to line"

Notice when you have the line selected with the pick point the color of that specific line your selecting changes.

After using the "Convert curve segment to line" it should look like this.

13 ) now will need to to adjust the height of the duplicated rectangle by selecting both points, you can do this by left clicking on the mouse and dragging across to the other point. example shown.

Or you can by left mouse clicking on one point then then doing the same to the other point but this time holding down CTRL.
once you have successfully selected both point you should see this arrow activated when pointing you mouse on it

19) While both points are selected hold down on the left mouse button and Pull the line to the middle of the rounded rectangle,example shown below.

now it should look like this

20) to get the final effect use the "fade out tool" with the following settings

there you go you did it ! :) enjoy.