How to: Make a button for your blog
Most of the fancy buttons you see on blogs and sites are made using Photoshop. I'm sure there are dozens of similar packages out there that will enable you to do this.
But for those of us who don't have Photoshop (or a friend with Photoshop), there are always the free button makers out there. They offer a generic button which you can personalise. Here are a few links to keep you busy:
Lucazappa.com
kalsey.com
netdenizen.com
feedforall.com
Alternatively, there's always MS Office PAINT. If you want to make something more personal take a photo or picture from your blog or your gallery and crop it in PAINT. This is what I did with the fairy button on my blog.
If you don't want to use a photo or picture, you could consider making a 'screenshot' of your blog like I have done on my beta blog.
To turn a screenshot into a button for your blog, you need to:
1) View your blog on screen;
2) Hit the Print Screen (Prt Scr) button on your keypad (this makes a copy or screenshot of the website or image on screen);
3) Open PAINT;
4) Paste the screenshot of your blog into a new PAINT document by selecting EDIT, PASTE;
5) Resize the picture by clicking on IMAGE and STRETCH/SKEW.
It's best to reduce the % of the horizontal and the vertical stretch in incriments of 25-50%. Keep doing this until you get down to the size you require. I reduced my picture to 120px by 90px. To check the pixels, click on IMAGE, scroll down to ATTRIBUTES, and you will see the WIDTH and HEIGHT of the picture displayed in either inches, centimetres or pixels. Select Pixels. If it's still too big, go back into IMAGE and resize the image.
Alternatively the image should be small enough to resize by hovering your cursor over one of the corners of the image and dragging the margin.
Have fun and play!
But for those of us who don't have Photoshop (or a friend with Photoshop), there are always the free button makers out there. They offer a generic button which you can personalise. Here are a few links to keep you busy:
Lucazappa.com
kalsey.com
netdenizen.com
feedforall.com
Alternatively, there's always MS Office PAINT. If you want to make something more personal take a photo or picture from your blog or your gallery and crop it in PAINT. This is what I did with the fairy button on my blog.
If you don't want to use a photo or picture, you could consider making a 'screenshot' of your blog like I have done on my beta blog.
To turn a screenshot into a button for your blog, you need to:
1) View your blog on screen;
2) Hit the Print Screen (Prt Scr) button on your keypad (this makes a copy or screenshot of the website or image on screen);
3) Open PAINT;
4) Paste the screenshot of your blog into a new PAINT document by selecting EDIT, PASTE;
5) Resize the picture by clicking on IMAGE and STRETCH/SKEW.
It's best to reduce the % of the horizontal and the vertical stretch in incriments of 25-50%. Keep doing this until you get down to the size you require. I reduced my picture to 120px by 90px. To check the pixels, click on IMAGE, scroll down to ATTRIBUTES, and you will see the WIDTH and HEIGHT of the picture displayed in either inches, centimetres or pixels. Select Pixels. If it's still too big, go back into IMAGE and resize the image.
Alternatively the image should be small enough to resize by hovering your cursor over one of the corners of the image and dragging the margin.
Have fun and play!
PS I've added these links to the sidebar! :)
1 comment:
you can also go to the downloads page on cnet and do a search for 'create blog buttons' and some programs will pop up. Some are completely free (I think!) while others are free on a trial basis.
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