I've tried to use paintshop pro and icon workshop to create icons that have a "shiny" effect, a bit like this:

http://www.kde-look.org/content/prev...egaman+Tribute

Does anyone know of any drawing tool that can do this easily?

CCK

Ive made pics in the gimp and they came out great. I think the shiny effect is due to the color blending and contrast, not so much on the program being used.

Indeed, as BajaNick said is just a matter of combinig effects. Specifycally on those icons, it was color blending and the use of transparency and gradients.

btw, i'm glad you linked my icons

LOL - it's a small world isn't it?

CCK

I did something like that
http://frontiernet.net/~darinf/freec...logo_thing.jpg
I used bezier curves to make a selection, set FG color to white and used a FG to transparent gradient in the bezier selection.

that looks really ice darin and is just the kind of thing i am trying to do. However, I have never used the gimp and only used paint shop pro to do simple things on windows. I will give it a try, did you use the gimp to draw that shiny ball too? Part of the problem is that I dont know what the gimp is capable of doing ...

If it is ot diificult to do can i be very cheeky and just ask someone here what the basic steps are that they use? I would be very grateful

CCK

Do not worry you may not get it right, cck23. If you would like to do it in gimp, do what I do whenever I want to create something I am unfamiliar with: Go to google/linux and type something like 'gimp shiny icon tutorial' or 'gimp glass icon tutorial'

There are many great tutorials out there, and it seems like there is usually a tutorial for most anything one might fancy doing. Hope this helps and if you happen to make like a set for firefox let me know.

You should check out the Gimp Tutorials for general stuff. I made icon like this.

1. create a new image
2. make a transparent layer
3. using elliptical select tool (circle select) hold down shift and start the selection in the top left corner and bring it down to the bottom right.
4. Select color (mine was dark blue) and use the bucket fill tool to fill the circle
5. Make another transparent layer and select it.
6. Right click on the image, go into the selection menu and find shrink.
7. Shrink the selection by the appropriate number of pixels, about 5.
8. Set your foreground and background color to the colors you want inside (light blue and dark blue)
9. Under the gradient selections (under the layers) select the FG to BG gradient option.
10. Select the gradient tool (the box that fades from green to white) and hold down your mouse at the top of the selection and drag it to the bottom or start and the bottom and drag to the top. You can also adjust the length of the line and starting and ending points
11. Make new transparent layer and use the elliptical select tool to create a region for the shiny(white) part. Make it go about a third of the length down.
12. Set your foreground color to white and select the gradient option 'foreground to transparent'
13. Select the gradient tool and start at the top and drag to the bottom of the selection or the otherway around for a different effect.
14. For text, make a new layer and use the arrows on the dialog box to move it below the shiny layer and put text in on that layer.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Darin, Thanks for posting the tutorial page, Its great.

Yup, thanks Darin, I did have a search on google but to be honest I had difficulty understanding what some of these kind people were trying to say but yours is more clearer Darin.

Thanks again, maybe you should put it up on a website with a few screen shots, or even how about putting on Wiki here at linux questions? Just an idea...

CCK