How to make a blog button using Photoscape

Recently, quite a few friends asked me to help them make a blog button so I thought it would be nice if I made a tutorial on making a blog button.

"What is a blog button?" you may ask.

A blog button is basically an image which links to your blog from other sites and is available to other bloggers/readers in case they want to share your blog. 
      
Once you have a button you can then join other bloggers in swapping. By swapping I mean you place someone's button in your sidebar, in return they place yours in their sidebar. Easy as that.

       
This post will show step by step instructions with screen shots to help you out when you decide on making a blog button. If you would like me to upload a video, please let me know.

Important steps prior to making the button

• Think about what image you would like to use for your button. If you need to take some pictures, go ahead.
• Decide on what sizes of buttons you would like. I have noticed that square and rectangular buttons are both popular, so it is left to you to decide.

Step 1

Download and install Photoscape. This is a free photo editor. Quite easy to use and doesn’t cost you anything. Make sure you have about 18MB of space on your computer before downloading.

Step 2

Once you have installed Photoscape, open the software and pick "Editor". It should look like this:

Step 3

Choose the image you would like to use from the list at the left. Because I have opened my image through photoscape before, I have it available a little bit below so I will just select it from there. You may want to crop your image at this point by going to the tab that says "crop" below the image.

Step 4

Because I am using a picture of myself, I will just add the blog name. I like to first make a slightly transparent box on which the text will later be put. This is because the blog name can be seen better when it is on a special background and not just on the image. To do this, select the box and pick the color you would like it to be, then adjust the opacity. I chose "Rose" for the color and moved opacity to about 60%.

Step 5

To insert the blog name, click on "T" at the bottom left of the screen. A new window will pop up to let you specify how you would like it to look. Pick the font in which you want the text to appear and the color. Maximum font size which can be chosen is "100" but this is not a problem because we will re-scale the text after.

If you would like to write a small description of the blog as I have done, you can insert 2 text areas so the Blog name is larger in size than the description.

Next we want to increase the size of the text. To do this, click on the bottom right size of the text area and drag to the right diagonally. 

Next we want to add the small description as previously mentioned. Proceed using same steps as with adding the blog name. Insert the text and then increase it in size by dragging.

Step 6

Move the text the way you would like it to appear and then save the button.

Final result

And voila, here is how your button looks in large format.

Other tips:

• Once your button is made, make sure to keep the large format safe. You can then re-size it and name it however it is comfortable for you to differentiate.
• When cropping your image, try to crop it to the larger format proportionate to the size you want to use it for later. For example, if you intend to use this image for square buttons (200x200 or 100x100) then crop the image so the proportions are constrained (500x500 or 1000x1000).

I hope this helps a lot of new bloggers, let me know if I can do anything to help.