How can I make neat looking buttons for my webpage?
With the gimp, it’s easy. Spice up your webpage with buttons to click on instead of just text links.
1. First, make a new image. Under File > New. 640×480 is fine.
2. Now let’s use the paint bucket tool to dump the background to a button color of our choice. I’m going to go with a random blue color.
Dump with the paint bucket tool:
3. Next click on the text tool, and then flip the color switcher to white. We are going to have white text.
4. Choose a nice font, then type out your button text.
5. Ok now with the rectangle select tool, select a rectangle roughly the size of the button you want around your text.
6. Click Edit > Copy Visible, then Edit > Paste as New Image.
7. Now with the new image, let’s give it a drop shadow. Click on Filters > Light and Shadow > Drop Shadow
8. On the Drop Shadow menu, I suggest bumping up the X and Y Offset to 12. Then click OK.
9. Your button is complete! Save as a png, and use that as your web button.
Here is the example clickable button:
Another example I made:
You could obviously be quite creative and make any sort of button desired. Buttons could be circular, square, odd-shaped, just an icon or image with no text, or whatever you desire.
Sweet!
