GIMP/Add a Shine to Buttons

What the Effect Looks Like The effect will produce something like this: Image:shine01.png Design the Button Image:shine02.png For this button I selected all, then did Image>Select>Rounded Rectangle, with a radius of 50. I filled it with red, then I selected the border and filled with a darker red. Add a New Layer for the Shine Create a new layer (call it shine or something similar), then select the whole region of your button (If you created it on a new layer you can right click on the layer and select “Alpha to Selection”), next shrink the selection (Image>Select>Shrink), how much you want to shrink it depends on the size of the image, for mine I used 6px, then fill the selection with white. Image:shine03.png Now, you have a big ugly white spot in your image, how will that be turned into a shine? First, turn the layer transparency down to about 80%, this is found in the layers dialogue Image:shine04.png Turn the Ugly Spot into a Shine First, add a layer mask, and select fill with black. (Full transparency). Image:shine05.png Then go to the gradient tool and select linear white to black gradient, (make sure you are editing the layer mask-- it should have a white border around it in the layers dialogue), draw a gradient from wherever you want the shine to start (Top-left corner in the example) to about the middle, feel free to experiment. Image:shine06.png ADD Once you are done you may add another layer for drawing on, or put text on, for the example I added the text “ADD”. Image:shine07.png Caption a Picture Using a Layer Mask to combine images