Shazi's sig making school!

[† Shazi]

kay, imma teach you guys some basics to sig making (or at least how i do it anyway) using photoshop.

this first tutorial is a simple way to make your render blend with the background, i'm not going to use and overly complicated background, just a simple gradiant for now.

Step one

Make yourself a new document (keyboard shortcut ctrl+n). since the maximum size for a sig on the forum is 500x500p lets make the size within that threshold

Step two

load your render up and drag it onto your new document. make sure you're using the "move tool" which can me found here

Step three

move the render into place, and resize it if nessicary using the free transform tool (keyboard shortcut ctrl+t). Most renders will have a watermark (which is the smaller image in the corner.) to remove this simply use the select tool and delete key, or the eraser tool.

TIP: to keep the proportions of the render hold down the shift key and resize from a corner

Step four

Add a gradient to the background layer. (make sure the background is the one you're working on otherwise the gradiant will drop over your render!)

i chose a purple noise selecetion gradiant, but it's entirely up to you and your render.

Step five

okay, now the blending. first, duplicate the render layer (keyboard shortcut ctrl+j) by right clicking and finding the option in the menu, second on the bottom render go Filter>blur>gaussian blur. depending on how soft you want the edges of you render to be is how many pixels you gaussian blur by. i use a base of 2.

Step six

the top layer containing your render should now be changed to one of the following blending moderken, Lighten, Overlay, Soft Light or Hard light

here's a preview of each

Darken

Lighten

Overlay

Soft light

Hard light

to find the blending options, they're here

and that's a basic way to get your render to blend next, we'll try some basic background work! so stay tuned

[† Shazi]

okay, we've done the render blending, now it's onto some background work. this one is gonna be pretty simple. one you can make without any custom brushes or filters. the first part may seem a little backwards, but it works out in the end

Step one

Like before, make a new document, again within the threshold of sig limit. next choose a colour with the colour picker and use the paint bucket tool to fill the entire document with a colour. T open the colour picker double click this on the tools bar

this is the colour picker

there's lots of different options on it for choosing colours, changing how intense the colour is, how dark or light it is. all kinds of things, i'll let you experiment with is as you will

Step two

create a new layer (keyboard shortcut ctrl+shift+n) and use the gradiant tool with the following settings

and drop it across the new layer. you should have something simmilar to this

feel free to screw around with the blend mode if you're not happy with the gradiant as it is

Step three

on another new layer (remember kids ctrl+shift+n) change the pain bucket tool to have the following settings

from the drop down menu, choose yourself a pattern and fill the new layer like so

Step four

now comes the fun part. there is no right or wrong with this, nor is there any single one way to do it. I tend to mess around with the blend mode, Opacity and order of the layers to get it the way i want it to.

TIP:

if the pattern you're using doesn work there's a simple way to change it. make sure you're on the right layer. ctrl+a to select the entire image (but only affecting the layer you're on) and delete to remove the pattern (ctrl+d to deselect), then simply drop another pattern and try again

Step five

the you have a simple background, with an interesting texture and gradiant to it. combine this with the render blending and you have something like this

TIP:

i got samus there to be all blue by changing the bottom layer to "luminosity" blend mode. have fun combining it with the basic's from the first tutorial

Okay, that's the background done. next we it's time for text!

[† Shazi]

text time! now i won't pretend to be any good at text effects, in fact i kinda suck at it, but i can teach you some basic things

Step one

now i'm going to use that samus sig from before for this one. start by selecting the text tool, which is this one

and type in what you would like on the sig. in my case i'll type in "samus"

Step two

now on the text bar there's is a lot of things to choose from. to make things simple, once you've written what you'd like, click somewhere away from the text so photoshop doesn't think you're still typing. now, cycle through your font's and find on you like. mine ended up with these settings

and looks like this

Step three

now double click the text layer and this box should come up

make sure that it's off tot he side a little so you can see what you're changing on the actual image

Step four

tick the box that says stroke then click on the word to change some of the options. stroke puts a line around the outside of the text, whichis what we wants. change the colour to black and the blend mode to overlay to have the text look some what like this

again, feel free to play around with the setting to see which works better. often you stumble upon good settings that way.

Step five

with the stroke looking right, change the blend mode of the layer to one of the ones you used for you render. i would reccomend overlay or soft light. if none of them look right fiddle with the opacity. In my case overlay didn't change the look of the text at all so i simple change the opacity to 90%

and there you have it, simple text addition to your sig. onwards to some custom brush work next time. stay tuned!

[† Shazi]

custom brush time! now there are lots of brushes all over the place. Deviantart,brusheezy, and adobe.com's exchange have some pretty good one that you can pick up for free.

Step one

to use a custom brush you need to first add it to you brush list, like so

click the little arrow pointing right

click on preset manager

load the brush and it will be tacked onto the end of the the brush list

for this tut i used brushes similar to this one

Step two

now to the real work. select a colour that constrasts with the background, since i've used a light blue i chose black. on a new layer (ctrl+shift+n) position your brush and click to put it there. like so

since the ones i've got are small, i'm going to keep going with different ones until i'm happy with it

Step three

Now don't worry if the blending isn't right to start with, we're getting to that now. once you're happing with the postions of your brushes it's time to have fun with the blending. Blend mode and opacity are your friends, don't be scared of them, and don't be scared to duplicate the layer and use a multitude of blending options. and don't forget that changing the order of the layers can have interesting effects too.

TIP:

also play around with the blur filers and sharpen filters, you never know what might work!

Step four

now after screwing around with the brush and setting and whatnot, this is the end result i had.

that should just about cover the basics. sorry for not elaborating on things and just saying to play around with it, but in all honesty that's all i do to get my end result. if you have any quieries feel free to pm me and i'm always glad to help you out if you're stuck

[† The Joker]

wow! very useful shazi!

[apr118]

Wow! I really appreciate this Ms. Shazi! I'm ma bookmark this

[Trend]

Thanks alot Shazi! I just started making sigs and I'm sure this'll help

[ウェンキ Leki]

Oh my. Excellent Guide Shazi.

[† Shazi]

not to bad for off the top of my head eh

[† poetictragedy]

I like this a lot, Shazi! I might have to try out some of your blending tricks. =)

[ウェンキ Leki]

Ya I might try to make a sig "HER" way.

[evilgblades]

wow shazi great tut maybe il do one later hehe or ask you to do one in class hehe

[SegaAnime]

thx shazi that great i do one wend i get back form my brother house

[† Shazi]

wow shazi great tut maybe il do one later hehe or ask you to do one in class hehe

if you want. i don't mind

[mishmash]

Really helpful. ^ㅠ^

[Hatedx33]

Thanks This helped me alot

[Sebastian]

I made this using your tutorial in Gimp I couldn't do the text thing though.

[Edder]

thanks shazi lady!!! just started making sig's last night, so this is going to help a HUGE amount!!!

[Sebastian]

Newest One, Still following alot from your tutorials shazi

[Odeiux]

If you guys would like anything extra like brushes, C4D's, Effects, Fonts ect. you can use this link provided by Mets08123 who is a well known for his graphics on other sites.

A little something I whipped up in just a few minutes.