Steps to create a clean looking engraved color button in

with the use of Eye Candy's 3.0 "Inner Bevel Feature"

 Your Challenge...to do this without the plug-in filter (hint-use dropshadows and mask inverting)

 

Step 1    Create a 300x300 background image using the same color as the background of your web-page. If you are using something wacky for a background pick the most common color in the background as your background color.

 

Step 2    Now select your shape tool (last one on the tool bar) and pull up the controls as well. Pick the shape from tools you want, select "Filled" for style and turn Antialias ON, outline should be set to 1 if you want the tool to be accurate. Now make sure you select a foreground color, this will be the color of the button. Apply the shape tool to the area you want to turn into a button, making sure to leave at least 50 free pixels on each side of the button. If you are making BIG buttons you may want to start with a larger new image from Step 1.

 

Step 3    Now change to the Magic Color Wand (the one that looks like a match) and make sure the tool settings are at RGB Value, zero tolerance, feather=1 for small buttons and 2 for large buttons, and Sample Merge Unchecked. Select the button with the wand. Now go to Image: Plugin Filters: Eye Candy 3.0: Inner Bevel from the Image Menu.

For smaller, clean elliptical buttons
I recommend these settings:

Bevel Width=3

Shape=Rounded

Smoothness=9

Shadow Depth=55

Brightness=85

Sharpness=26

Direction=134

Inclination=48

 

and Click the little Black Pen in the filter window and save the setting as BiosFear Button.. Click the check to apply the filter.

 

Step 4    Hit control-shift-I (invert mask from Selection Menu) if you like the button, otherwise hit undo and find a setting you like with the filter. After the mask is inverted repeat the same filter process. Since the mask is inverted the settings for light are already consistent. A similar effect can be achieved without the inverted mask by using the outer bevel, but then you have to find the opposite lighting effects (what a pain in the butt). Just apply the second filter and we're almost done.

 

Step 5    Now hit Control-D to unselect the mask. Go to your mask shaping tool, select rectangle from Selection type in the tool control window. Select around the button, don't cut it to close, the shades are hard to see sometimes. You can cut it real close if you zoom in and look at the pixels. This will help minimize file size. Copy the selected area and Paste it as a new Image. Save this button now for future use and apply the following file formatting techniques after you have added text or whatever to the button.

Step 6    Reduce the color of the image from the Color Menu to 256 colors, if it asks to merge just say "yes", sure what the heck. Set the Palette to Optimized Median Cut, the Reduction method to Error Diffusion, and select to Include Windows' Colors and Color Bleeding. Hit OK. Now go to the Colors Menu and select to Set Palette Transparency, select "Set the transparency to the current background color" and than select the background color with the wand while the window to Set Palette Transparency window is still open. You should see the Index palette value automatically change. Hit OK. Save the File as a .gif.