We will need a blank button. You may use this one for practice.

  This is the blank button from my Snowman Set. On the set page, it should tell you the Font that was used. I used Desdamona and used the fill in color of #bd0800.

Open the saved blank button into the PSP6 work space.

To work on it, an image needs to be 16 million colors . Your blank button will not be this many colors as it was a saved image. Here's how you will know. Look at the Status bar at the bottom right, and you will see the image properties.

This information will always be about the image that is active in the workspace. This tells us that the image is 150 pixels wide by 50 pixels high; and is 256 colors. It also gives you the amount of space it takes up in bytes; in this case 8.4 Bytes.

As it must be 16 million colors, you have to increase it.

Go to your Title Bar at the top of the workspace and click on Colors. Then, at the very bottom of that menu, go to Increase Color Depth and a new side bar will open with 16 million colors as the choice.

Choose this by clicking on it and you will be able to add effects to the button. Check the status bar and you will now see that the image is more colors and bigger because of it.

I use this feature so much, I have put the Increase color arrow on my Toolbar.

For practice, we will add the word Photos to the button.
Go to the Tool Palette and select the Text Tool.  

Point your cursor to the blank space on your button, which will change into the text cursor. Click once and a new window will open, the Text Entry window.

Here are the settings you need to choose:

The Font name is Desdamona;
the size of the font is 22;
the large box of color should be black-the others do not matter for this lesson;
we are not choosing antialias as we usually would because that was not used on these buttons.

Click on the OK button at the bottom.

Now, don't dispare over this next part. You need to position the text on the button.

Move your cursor over the text until you see a four-way arrow, the cursor will change into that. Click and drag the text to center it. That sounds easy and sometimes it is. But, one thing may happen and here is how you will handle that.

If you click on the text and the cursor has moved, you will get the Text Entry box again. Just click on Cancel and you will go back to the workspace. Your text will still be there, you already chose it. If you click OK when the Text Entry box opens again you will put another layer of text on the button; you do not want to do this. If you do, just hit the undo button and it will disappear.  

After you get your text positioned as you want it, by releasing the mouse, it will be selected and show a marquee.
  Right click anywhere inside the button and that will deselect the text.

Now the text needs to be filled to match the other buttons.

Go to the color palette on the right and click on the front color square.   In this image, the lighter one.

This will open the Color wheel. Since you know the HTML code for the fill color, #bd0800, you can just replace the code in the HTML code: box. Highlight what is there, delete it and replace it with the fill color. In the image here, I have done that and you can see the dark red color in the Current Color box.

Click OK to choose this color.

Go to the Tool Palette and choose the Flood Fill tool.  

Go to your button and fill the text with this color. You will have better success if you zoom the image to at least 5:1. You can do this several ways. I can do this with the center wheel on my mouse; roll it one way it zooms out, the other way in (it will zoom the active image in the work space).

The other way you can zoom is to use the zoom view in PSP. On the Menu Bar, under View, choose the setting Zoom In By 5.

After you are done filling the center of the text, you will need to reverse the zoom by choosing Zoom Out By 5.

If you click on the wrong area with your Flood Fill tool, just use the undo button to reverse the mistake.

After you have filled the text and reduced the size back to normal you are ready to save it. If you get a pop up window that says you need to limit the colors to 256- do you want to continue? Choose yes.

Your button will most likely have a background to match the page set. If it does, then save it now. If it does not, you will have to save it as a transparent button or it will have a dark patch around it when you go to use it.

This is one way to save as a transparent gif in PSP6.

If it does not match the page set background: take your dropper tool,    click on the background outside the button. The color will come up in the color palette on the side. Click on the box with that color.

This will open the color wheel and show the HTML Code: in the Current color window.

Make a note of the number.

Cancel the Color Wheel.

Click on File, go down to Export. When the side bar opens, choose Transparent Gif by clicking on it.

This opens the Transparent Gif Saver menu. Choose Areas that match this color, click inside the color box and a new Color Wheel will open.
Replace the HTML code, as you did before, with the color code of the background.

All the areas with this background color will now disappear and you will see a checkered grid where the color was.

Click OK and a save window will open for you to choose where to save it.