1. For this Gradient Menu Bar tutorial, you will need to start off by creating a new image from scratch. It is best to have your width very high while the height is low. A 100x20 pixel canvas (default 72 resolution) with a white background will do.
2. Create a new layer in this image. This new layer will be used for the Gradient Menu Bar. Immediately fill this layer with a color of your choice. For this example, I chose a blue.
3. Right click on the new layer and open up the Blending Options and select Gradient Overlay.
4. In the Gradient Overlay options, select Overlay as your Blend Mode. The Gradient will be the Black to White selection but with this new Overlay blend it will adopt the Blue scheme we have chosen for our layer. Modifying the Scale like so will bring interesting effects to your Gradient Menu Bar.
By altering the Gradient you can achieve many different effects, but for now we have a very basic Gradient Menu Bar.
