It’s incredible how making an early 00’s Aqua button is essentially Lost Art. Even back then it was challenging, but the challenge was… reproducing the reference instead of approximating it than saying “close enough”. It was about a dozen of steps in Photoshop, done destructively, no layer styles.

Now you see people constantly trying to remake it in pure CSS, but CSS can’t do it. In vector software, but vector absolutely can’t reasonably do it. With layer styles, but layer styles aren’t enough. Finding the knowledge how to do it today would be impossible, buried under a pile of “close enough”