Userbars

It’s not exactly part of the logo making process but user bars are becoming popular so I decided to find out how to make them myself.

I’m going to assume that you know your way around gimp 2.6. (If there are people who want an easier tutorial I will simplify it.) Before you start the tutorial you will also need this font:

http://www.dafont.com/unlearned-bitmap.font?nb_ppp=50

Step #1

Most people have user bars with a height of 19 pixels and a length of anywhere between 300 and 400. For this tutorial I’m going to use 350.

Step #2

I suggest zooming in so go to View>Zoom>Fit Image in Window or Shift + CTRL + E.

Next decide what you are going to use for the logo for. I’m going to do a windows logo.

There are several ways to do this step.

You can have a solid color

You can have a gradient going across

Or you can have a gradient going down

It’s up to you.

Step #3

Create a new image that is 6 by 6 pixels

Step #4

Zoom in to 1600%

Also change the brush size to 0.01

Step #5

Now using the pencil tool draw 6 squares going from the bottom right hand corner to the upper right hand corner.

They can be any color but I find that white shows up the best so I would suggest it.

Step #6

Next save the file in “C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\patterns”

Name the file userbar.pat

Step #7

Go back to the window in which you where making the user bar.

On your keyboard hold Shift+CTRL+P

This should bring up the patterns dialogue.

Step #7

Click on the refresh button to refresh the patterns.

Step #8

Find the pattern that you made.

The white one will look like this:

And the black one will look like this:

Step #9

Create a new layer (CTRL+Shift+N) and then drag the pattern onto the image.

It should look like this:

Step #10

Open the layers box (CTRL +L) and change the opacity to 50%. If you want it darker or lighter adjust the opacity accordingly.

Step #11

Take the image that you want on your user bar and center it on the left hand side of the bar.

Step #12

Now for the words.

Create a new layer (CTRL + Shift + N)

Then find the font that you installed at the beginning of this tutorial. It should be called Unlearned 2 BRK

Change the preferences to the image below. (Turn off hinting and Antialiasing)

Step #13

Now create a new text bubble and type in your text. I like my word big so I went with size 16 but this is optional.

Try to center it in the middle of the right side.

Step #14

Now let’s change our font so it’s white.

Use the paint bucket and fill in the inside of the font.

Step #15

We’re almost there…

Use CTRL + M to merge all the visible layers.

Then duplicate the current layer. To do this right click on the background layer and click duplicate.

Step #16

On your keyboard type CTRL +A, CTRL + X, and then CTRL + V.

It should now look like this:

Step #17

Use the elliptical select tool to make the gloss.

Step #18

Use the bucket tool to fill it with white. Change the threshold to 255% and then fill in the ellipse.

Step #19

Now change the transparency to 20%

Step #20

Merge the layers by using CTRL +M

Step #21

Save the image and your done!