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a tutorial for those of you who are trying to learn the basics of making a sig.
open a new document with the parameters of 450x150.
lets add an interesting but very simple background. go to Filter > Render > Clouds
now right now that looks kinda boring. so lets add some color.
hit Ctrl+U to enter the Hue/Saturation adjustment window. and set these parameters: Hue- 20, Saturation- 46, Brightness- 0
mmmm color. but it still looks boring.
lets add a stripe in there to make it a little busier. create a new layer and take your rectangular marquee tool and make a short rectangle the width of the document somewhere near the bottom. we can use this to serve as a nice box to put some text in later on... maybe your username or something.
take the paint bucket tool and choose a shade of white, and fill in that rectangle.
as of now you have a completely opaque rectangle ontop of a nice background... it doesnt quite blend together very well. so lets lower the opacity to about 35% to make it blend with the background a bit.
so i decided to add a border around the white area. to do so, right click on the layer in the layers palette, and go to Blending Options, and go to Stroke.
and set the parameters shown below:
see now doesnt that look a lot better?
while were at it lets put a border around the background too. go back to the background layer. (since the layer is locked by default as the "Background Layer", you will have to duplicate the layer to make it unlocked so we can change the blending options).
go into the Blending Options and go to Stroke again and set these paramater shown below:
now (for this tutorial's purpose) the background is just about done. we'll finish it later though.
lets add an image to the sig.
i used this image, but you can choose your own
lets add the picture to the sig...
alright... that looks pretty good...
but if you look closely, you can see that the picture hangs over the background border... so very carefully, go in and delete the spots that hang over the border.
much better.
now lets fill some of that empty space on the left. i decided to add another picture.
i chose this one, but again, you can do what you want
again, i cut out the image (excluding the (r) symbol), and dragged it over to the sig document.
alright. that looks good. but i dont want this image to be the main focal point of the sig, so lets fade it into the background.
change the blending mode of the image to Soft Light to blend it in, then bring the opacity down to about 50%.
but even with it blended in to the background, it seems to take a little too much attention sitting perfectly straight and crisp.
so lets play around with it a little bit. i decided to blur it a little bit. but i used the radial blur rather than just normal blur to give it a nice effect.
if you would like to blur it the way i did, then you would need to go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur, and set the blur mode to Zoom and give it a radius of about 20.
after that, i decided to distort the image a bit, maybe give it a little depth to it, so i went into Free Transform mode (Ctrl+T) and spun the image counter clockwise a tad bit, then shaped it with Shift+Alt+Ctrl and dragging the top left point uwards to make it start to appear 3 dimensional.
ok, now its time to add some text in that little white area that we made earlier.
all i did was add my username using the text tool.
Note: i used the font Blade 2 which can be downloaded at www.dafont.com free of charge
now you are 99% done!
last step is to tag it so everyone knows you made it
i usually prefer using letters resembling my username so people can relate my work with my username... but you can do what you want.
if you decide to use text, you can use a text box to do that, or if you plan on using the same exact tag everytime, you can make your own brush.
to make your own brush, you can follow the top set of steps in the Scan Lines/Dots tutorial... and instead of making dots or scan lines, use text at about a 12pt font inside about a 12x12 square transparent document, and save the file as a brush instead of a pattern (Edit > Define Brush).
and now youre done!
if you had already read the tutorial on Scan Lines and Dots, then you can go ahead and add a nice pattern too
i made a new layer for this pattern, and placed it behind the image to the left and the text, but in front of everything else.
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"When teams come into Philly, they aren't just playing the Flyers, they are playing 20,000 fans too."
__________________ “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”
~Samuel Adams
__________________ “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”
~Samuel Adams
very good except for the front wheel looks like it has a flat and you should lower the opacity of the engine compartment and maybe rub out the ends with a cool looking brush.
a few things i would have done would be to make the engine shot bigger to fill in that space a little more, and use a soft tip eraser on a low fill setting and erase the sides of the engine bay... make it blend to the background a bit.
also i would up the contrast on the background a little bit, give some definition between the lights and darks.
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"When teams come into Philly, they aren't just playing the Flyers, they are playing 20,000 fans too."
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Simple Sig tutorial
), and dragged it over to the sig document.
