I'm So Rubbish At Photoshop

[MadDoc]

I'm trying to get into web design in my spare time and am in the process of making a site mock-up in Photoshop but I seem to be falling at the first hurdle.

I am simply trying to make a rounded rectangle and then fill gradient colour-fill it. I drew the shape with the rounded rectangle tool and it popped up in a new layer. I then tried to use the gradient fill tool on the shape but it said that "the content of the layer is not directly editable". If I rasterize the layer then when I try to gradient fill the shape it ends up filling the whole layer (including the shape). What am I doing wrong? I'm pretty sure I'm making harder work of this than I need to be!

Thanks,

MadDoc

 

[Father Jack]

Open a new document
Pick the rectangular marquee tool
Set the feather at 30 (ish) pixels
draw the shape
fill with gradient
Copy the filled shape
paste into a new document

 

[Regular_John]

use the rounded rectangle tool like did, but instead of using a fill use the gradient overlay in your layer styles