Make a Button Set in GIMP

Tutorial by MaryofMagdala. This tutorial requires some knowledge of GIMP commands and controls.

STEP 1: Create a new image 200 X 200 pixels with a white background. Create a new transparent layer and name it Button Background. Place guides so that they interesect at the exact center of your image, which in this case means they are at the 100 and 100 points on the ruler. Then place the mouse cursor where the guides intersect and draw a perfect circle that's as big as you want the outside of your button to be. Doing this can be a bit tricky, so follow these directions to the letter:

First, turn on the Elipse Select tool.
Click and hold down the mouse button where the guides intersect.
Press and hold down CNTL and SHIFT
Draw your circle by pulling out toward the edges of the image.
Release the mouse button.
Release the CNTL and SHIFT keys.

Fill the cirlce with black.

Next, load the selection into an Alpha channel so we can use it again. Then shrink the selection by about 4 pixels, create a new layer, name that layer Button Color and fill the selection with the color you'd like your button to be. I like blue. Keep the cirlce selected.

Now, activate the rectangle select tool and set it to Subtract. Draw a rectangle over the lower half of of the image, stopping at the horizontal guide. This should leave only the upper half of your circle selected. Then create a new layer, name it Dark Glow, and fill it with a black-transparent linear gradient. Set the gradient opacity to 80%. To draw the gradient, start at the top of the selected area and drag down to the horizontal guide.

Now, get the selection from the Alpha channel and create a new layer. Name this layer Light Glow. Shrink the selection by 6. Then, using the rectangle select set to subtract, draw over the upper half of the image, so that only the lower half of the circle is selected. Fill this selection with white, then deselect everything.

Now apply a Gaussian Blur RLE. I've found that a setting of 20 works well. Then take the layer opacity down to 70%. You should now have a nice sheen at the bottom of your image. However, this also leaves some of the glow in areas we don't want it to be (though it's hard to see with the white background there). To get rid of that, make sure Light Glow is still the active layer, get the selection from the Alpha channel, shrink it by 2, then press CNTL-I to invert it. Then press CNTL X to clear every bit of the glow that isn't inside the button itself.

The next step is to create a crescent. Get the selection from the Alpha channel, create a new transparent layer, and name it Crescent. Then shrink the selection by 8 and activate the elipse select tool. Set the tool to Subtract, then draw an elipse on the image so that only a crescent remains. It helps to hold down CNTL and start on the horizontal guide about 3/4ths of the way to the right edge of the canvass and then pull up and to the left. Then fill the crescent with white and deselect everything.

Then apply a Gaussian Blur RLE set to 10, take the layer opacity down to 55%, and clear any overlap blur the same way we did before.

We're almost done. Our next step is to put a glassy sheen on top of the button. Create a new layer and name it Glassy Sheen. Then, using the ruler, set vertical guides that are exactly the same distance away from the center vertical guide. About 2/3rds of the way to the edge of the button works well (zooming in helps a lot with this). Then draw an oval between these two guides and fill it with a white-transparent linear gradient, dragging the tool from the top of the oval to the bottom.

Clear the guides and you're done!

To change the colors of the button, and create a button set, first save as an XCF (so you will have all the layers saved), then merge all the layers except the white layer (Don't merge Button Background if you want to keep a black border around all your buttons). Then open the Hue-Saturation dialog (Layer > Colors > Hue-Saturation) and play around with the Hue slider. You may want to set some guides and crop the image before you do this. Once you've made all the colors you want, you can open a new, bigger image, set guides, and paste the buttons in, using the guides to space them evenly. NOTE: To preserve tansparency of your final set, save as a PNG with no colored background layer.

Final Touches

You may want to put something into the button, like text or a design. To make it look like it's inside the button, create a new layer under Glassy Sheen and put whatever you want there. To make something look like it's etched into the top of the button, create a new layer on top of all other layers, draw whatever you want and give it a small drop-shaddow.