.:OBJECTIVE:.
To create an easy and attractive forum signature without excessive know how of the Photoshop program.

.:DIFFICULTY:.
Medium, must have some rudimentary Photoshop skills and the ability to follow instructions.

.:TOOLS:.
Photoshop 7.0 or above.

.:TUTORIAL:.
1. First of all get this image (image made by me with brushes by silverninja from deviantART). Copy and paste this onto a new sheet in Photoshop.
2. Create a new page (ctrl + N) with a size you feel is appropriate for your creation, I myself prefer 400px by 100px. Now paste (ctrl + V) the image as a background image for your signature, move it around with the move tool (the button on the uppermost right corner of your tool bar) until you are satisfied with its placement.

3. Press ctrl + U to enter the Hue/Colorization box, check both boxes at the bottom and move the three sliders around (hue, saturation, and lightness) until you are satisfied with the color changes on your background.

4. Now comes the difficult part, go on to Google Image Search or Search-22 Image Search and find a character you would like to place upon your signature, I’m just going to use Cloud from Advent Children as an example. Now copy and paste the image onto a new document, resize it until you feel its size is perfect and paste it onto your signature.

5. Now comes the difficult part, you have to blend this image into the background. Take the lasso tool and draw around the edge of your character, it does not have to be perfect, after you make a full circle, right click inside the circle and choose feather and enter 33 into the box that appears. Press ctrl + C then ctrl + V, delete the previous layer thus leaving behind a ghosted image of what you had before. Take the eraser tool, change the hardness to 0 and size to around 20 and brush around the edges to erase the excessive images that was not take out during the feather, be extra careful around things like hair.

6. Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Match Color (for the bottom part select your signature and then the layer the background image is on) and play around with the sliders until the character further blends into the background. Duplicate the character three times, go to the layer pallet and for the top layer set the opacity at 60 for the middle layer set the blending mode to soft light and for the last layer go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. Again, mess around with the slider until you get the effect you want.

7. Click the text tool, choose a text style you want type out your name, I used Blade 2 and Bitdust from DaFont and did some fancy effect to it (I’ll show you text blending/effects in another tutorial.

8. The final part, create a new layer, now press ctrl + A and go to Edit -> Stroke and choose a 1px black stroke, then make another selection about 2px away from the stroke you just created and do the same thing again, this gives the effect of a transparent border (make sure this layer is the topmost layer).

9. Save this file as a .jpg and host it on ImageShack and update your profile and you are done.

.:FINAL RESULT:.
Final result achieved with more brushing and stuff...


.:COMMENTS:.
Feedback welcome and stuff, PM me if you have any problems. I won't put any images up because this tutorial is very much self explanatory, however if you really can't figure it out and HAVE to have pictures to be able to do it, post here, I'll post some pictures.

Really nice tutorial. Very easy and step-by-step instructions. One question: Could you maybe make a tutorial on the process on how to make the background image? Maybe you already made one and I missed it or you know of any good ones on the web please let me know, thanks.

Very nice. It very easy to understand. However, if you don't mind, I'd like to suggest something on step five. It works pretty much the same way, but It give you a little more room for making changes. Use the lasso tool with a feather set at ...oh 15 or so and make the selecting roughly around the edges. The click "Add layer mask" It should be at the bottom of the layers floting thing. Right under the layer thumbnail.

Here's a kinda vague example. I made this ages ago and it's kinda ugly, but you get the picture.


From there, you can click on the thumbnail on the right. (the black and white one). Use the brush tool set at either black or white and mess around with it.




redsox: There really isn't much to it. Just go to DeviantArt.com. Browse>Resources>PS brushes. There are a bunch of really good brushes. Once you have them saved and loaded, open up a big-ish canvas in PS and just start brushing. You kinda need an eye for it. Once you have some good brushes, you'll find it easier.

good tutorial! You guys have some great ideas

Cool tutorial! I really liked the outcome. I will post my result after I have tried it.

It's neat, but please add images between the steps.

That is not only useful for the ones following the tutorials, but other people quickly browsing through tutorials checking it's worth.

In case you sell products, provide programs for download and the likes one will always get more people interested with a quick screenshot. Reading takes so long

Definitely neat for sigs. Many try too hard and come up with something ugly and bulky. Its small, slick and finished. Stopped using signatures anyways.

Name: Anonymous
Email:
Opinion/Suggestion * Good tutorial, I'm going to try it right now, thanks for the background image, its a nice one. I'm going to try to make my own with some other brushes.


-Anonymous

Name:Unforgetable
Email:unforgetable.Kid@hotmail.Com
Opinion/Suggestion *:hello, since I don't have Adobe Photoshop 7.0 at the moment can you please upload the same picture with 200x200 pixels? please I need it. The picture is kinda cool.

Blending/Brushing
Photoshop Tutorial: Forum Signatures

Replying to Dream
WOW This is the first time I've used Photoshop for this and I think I did a pretty decent job for a newbie. But I was wondering how I can adjust the opacity of the feather, and also I'm getting a weird error when I try to feather another layer, it says "the amount of pixels selected is more than 50% and you wont be able to see the edges, or something like that. I use Photoshop 7.

P.S how can I upload a picture of it so you guys can see it?

-Crispin

Im confused
Photoshop Tutorial: Forum Signatures

I made one sig but I want to know where to find more backgrounds becuase I want to make more sigs whit more background.So plaease tell me









Thanks



-Wmaster8