Here's a guide you can use to help you make a signature image in Photoshop CS.

Before we begin you need to pick out a good "render" for your signature. A render is basically an image that takes the focus in your signature, the render I will use currently looks like this

First off I hit Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+C, then I go to File> New, and I set my image proportions to 410 wide, and 165 high.
Then I hit Ctrl+V and right click the eraser tool I select the Magic eraser tool, I hold down Ctrl and then left click my render. I move my render all the way to the right, then I let go of the mouse button. If the background is currently white, and not like this>
http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/5844/screen10zh.png Once again select the Magic Eraser tool, and then, pointing your cursor away from your render left click once, the white brackground should dissapear. I'd recommend saving your image now...

Create a new layer by going to Layer> New Layer> name it whatever you want> OK
Then, go to Window, and check Layers if it is not checked, and then left click your new layer and drag it to the bottom. If Layers is already checked find the Layers box and drag your new layer to the bottom.
Select the layer again then select the bucket tool, with the color white slected, and repeatedly fill the layer until it is a solid white.
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8393/screen28bh.png

Now I select some brushes, and some colors that compliment my render, and I brush the background like mad...
Then when I have a nice effect I go back to my render, and select Filter> Blur> Gaussion Blur> .5
Then I lightly bush over my render with my opacity set to 60%.

Then I head over to www.dafont.com and get myself a nice techno-ish font. The font I selected is called 13 Misa.
Then I select the test tool and my new font, and chose new colors that not only compliment my render, but my brackground.
Then I right click the text layer, and give it a a basic shadow.

So far I have this (shh... Don't tell NilsC this is another Gift Sig for him... ) > http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/4927/screen34qs.png
(if you still have questions about how I did the background and the text just reply or send me a PM, and I'll help you out.)

Now we create another layer, and we put it on top of everything else so far. When I think my image is good enough I save it as a .png and open it up in MS Paint. And make a 1 pixel black border with the line tool and make an identical border, inside that, just one pixel smaller on every end.


My finished product is this

Voila!!!

Nice tutorial. I've always tried testing the filters of Adobe Photoshop and I never come up with any practical nor good design. Unrotunately for me, some of my friends who have basically no knowledge of Photoshop at all comes up with such great BG designs and i just envy them and pity myself.
What you've done is already excellent by my standards. I only usually get a nice random design once every month? But most of the time I'll just forget the sequence of how i did it and it'll be too late. So yeah this is really good.

Nice Toutorial i agree, but i can never get Photoshop to work for me. It always messes up everytime i load the program.

If you don't have any artistic skills and want to make a nice looking background, just go steal a nice looking picture from Google's Image Search and use Grunge Brushes on it to make it look like dried up crap. Honestly, it works because those who never heard of this brush will think you are really talented.

About renders, you can find almost any picture in Google's Image Search. Just highlight around the picture, copy and paste it onto your background, move it to your desired location and voila! Another piece of crap for the world to see.

Pfft. Ask somebody who can work the beauty to do it. There are so many try hard grunge kiddies it's not funny any more. Nice tut.. Where did you get the picture? Though it rarely happens, if the original owner of the pic sees you using it as a render they may get rather tetchy about it. It has happened, though the chances of such meetings are very rare.

@techocian Try using less filters and more burshes, try some nice grunge or fractal style burshes from Deviant Art to get you started, try this one http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/21317390/, if you need help installing them PM me.

@jet I got it from a render pack by a skilled Photoshop user over at Trap17 http://files.filefront.com/render_7/;3911651;;/fileinfo.html (if you guys want to see some aweseome stuff you should take a quick glimpse at some stuff over there by Johnny, Saint-Michael, or Snlildude87, or you could look at Moonwitch's stuff, she's really good.)

How does one install fonts and/or brushes in photoshop?

i was looking at some of these photoshop tuts here yesterday and i liked yours the best. there were some other great ones too but yours just had the simplicity of a great sig....so i started messing around in photoshop cs2 today and last night and i came up with what i think is a pretty cool sig...i like it...

lets start with fonts... if you are running windows xp go into the control pannel and switch to classic view (if you are running an older version of windows you shouldnt need to do that). Then drag and drop your font file into the fonts folder and it will install to everything to which you type. For brushes open us Photoshop folder in your harddrive go to folder called presets. Then under presets go into folder brushes. Then just drag and drop photoshop brush files into it

This is a brilliant tutorial, it provides some amazing results, thankyou very much

This post has been edited by szupie: May 27 2006, 11:27 PM