TechnoMono

In this tutorial I’ll show you how I made these mac buttons:

Open GIMP and create a new image (CTRL+N), mine is 420×200. Create a new layer (Layer > New Layer) called “color” with a fill type of transparency.

Make a selection for the button with the rectangular select tool (R), my selection is 198×43, then go Select > Rounded Rectangle and set it to 90%. Change the foreground color to #0039B3 and the background color to #9ADEFA, then select the gradient tool (L) and click and drag (while holding CTRL to keep the gradient straight along the vertical axis) from top to bottom of the selection.

Create another layer called “shadow” with a fill type of transparency, and fill it with black using the fill tool (SHIFT+B). Deselect (CTRL+SHIFT+A) then go Filters > Blur > Gaussain Blur, set the blur radius to 5px for both horizontal and vertical and click OK. Move the layer below the color layer in the layer stack (Layer > Stack > Lower Layer). Move the shadow down by 1px using the move tool (M), and the down arrow key (press down arrow once).

Right click on the color layer in the layer stack and select “Alpha to Selection”, then create a new layer called “highlight” with a fill type of transparency. Select the rectangular select tool (R) and change the selection mode to subtract (holding CTRL when making a selection temporarily changes the selection mode to subtract).

Select the lower half of the button, you should now have a slim selection across the top of the button:

Select the gradient tool (L), change the gradient type to “FG to Transparent”.

Press D then X to reset and swap the colors so that white is the foreground color, then click and drag from top to bottom of the button.

We’ll make some changes to the highlight to give it a more realistic look, but we’ll need to use guides for this.

Click and drag downward from the top ruler in the image window:

Place the guide at the bottom of the highlight, drag 2 guides from the left ruler and set them up like so:

The left and right guides are 9px in from the button’s edges. If you zoom in to about 800% (View > Zoom > 800%) you’ll notice that when you move the guides they move 1px at a time, so move them to the edges at 100% zoom then accurately position them at 800% zoom.

Select the perspective change tool (SHIFT+P). Make sure that Supersampling is enabled and that Interpolation is set to Cubic in the tool options.

Click once on the image; you will now see 4 handles at each corner of the selection. Move the bottom handles to the cross sections of the guides like so:

(You may need to zoom in a bit to get the handle positions precisely on the guides cross sections.)

Then click transform. There will be an odd looking selection, click the anchor button in the layers window or press CTRL+H.

Now move the highlight down by 2px using the move tool (M) and lower the opacity to 90% (top right of the layers window).

Add your text (T), the font I’m using is Neuropol. I added a border by selecting the text (right-click the text layer and choose “Alpha To Selection”) then growing the selection by 2px (Select > Grow > 2px), then making a new layer (Layer > New Layer) and filling it with white (SHIFT+B) and finally moving the layer below the text layer (Layer > Stack > Lower Layer) and lowering the layer opacity to 50%.

NOTE: Make sure that the highlight layer is at the top of the layer stack.