Complete guide to grunge sig w/ visuals

Id like to apologise in advance for the double post, it didnt fit on one!

In order to create a grunge signature you will need the following:

- Photoshop (preferably CS1 or CS2)
- A basic knowledge of the photoshop interface (brushes, layers, filters)
- Patience. Your first will never be the best.

The key to a good grunge sig is a good set of brushes. You can download brushes from many sites:

-Deviant art
-Terrasight (useful blood brushes)
-Greycobra

Make sure you download these to a place that you can remember. Personally i have one single folder which i store all of my brushes for easy access (no pun intended). For this tutorial i will be using the 'Despirited Grunge Brushes Set1 by ~Despirited' click <here> to get them.

1.Preparation

Now to actually start making, create a new file, of any dimension you wish, for this i will be using a canvas size of 450x150 with the following settings:



Once this document is opened

- Press 'D' and then 'X' on your keyboard. This should reset your colours to a white foreground colour and black background colour.

The next part is arguable at what to do, but i like to stick to my conventional method of using clouds as a background layer on my sigs, especially with grunge sigs... so....

2.Creating background

- Go to filter > render > clouds:



and it should look like this:



Now children we learn to paint... Are you sitting comfortably? then I'll begin.

-Start by 'replacing current brushes' with your grunge brushes, do this by pressing 'b' and where you normally change your brush type at the top of your window, click the small arrow, like so:



-You then need to load your despirited brush set... remember where you saved it? good. Heres a visual:



-Now choose a brush that you want. Any. It doesn't really matter.
-Create a new layer (Layer>new layer or Ctrl+Shift+N)
-Set the blending option of the new layer to 'Soft Light'
-Ensure that your colours are black and white still (press 'D' then 'X')
-Choose a size of brush you want. All of the brush does not have to fit on canvas.
-Begin to paint over, in white for now with one brush.


*note that the blending option is on soft light, and the colours are set to white and black*

-Once you are satisfied, press 'X' and start to add some black to your layer, untill you are satisfied.



-Now its up to you to decide how much you want to put on, how many layers, and which brushes. Every time you change brush add a new layer, and ensure its on soft light. Once you are satisfied your sig may look something like this: (remember not to go over the top, as it will look tacky)



Once you are happy, flatten the image. Please read part two, to finish your image

 

3. Adding an image/render

-This part is where you get more freedom. You need to choose a render which will suit a grune style. Many renders are available on the internet. I personally like to use Terrasight as it has some good grunge/gothic/industrial style pictures, however it requires more effort as your picture must be cut out of the original image, you can use whatever you like for this part. Other sites include:

-Clan Templates (renders section)
-Planet Renders
-Render-World
-Terrasight - requires you to cut out manually

For this particular sig i have decided to use this image:



Start by copying the image you want and pasting it into your image (if you dont know how to do that please stop reading.... now.) Don't worry about the size of it, we will resize once its pasted.

When you paste it into the document, the render may be bigger, Press ctrl + t, and a box will appear around the render, make sure the render layer is selected. Then drag the arrows to where you want them, and to the desired size. The surrounding box will look like this:



Once it has been resized to the size you want, press enter, or the tick which has appeared on the console to the top of your window. If it looks distorted, dont worry, photoshop will make it clear for you (how thoughtful). It should then look something like this:



-Now we are going to add some colour. make sure that you only have two layers; a background layer, and the render layer.
-Select your background layer, and press ctrl+u to open the hue/saturation settings.
-Check that colourise is enabled, and use the sliders to choose which colour you want.
-Notice that when preview is selected the background layer will change colour as you move the sliders:



-When you are happy click ok, and select your render layer.
-Change the blending options of the layer to suit your needs
-Some useful ones for you could be luminosity, screen or multiply

For my sig i will be using multiply, as it keeps the render dark, which is useful for a grunge sig.

-You can also change the opacity of a layer to add extra effect.

4. Adding Text

-For a grunge sig, a nice font to use would be Impact, however you can download any font you want and use it.
-A good font website is Dafont
-Select a nice large size and type whatever you want.
-Place it anywhere you like on your image, providing that it looks good
-Now go to blending options (right click on the text in the layer panel and click blending options)
-Add the following options:






-Please note that depending on the colour you selected, the colour overlay, and the Bevel must be changed where appropriate.
-Press OK, and your font will have appeared with the changes made, however it does not look very good.
-Select the eraser tool, and change the pattern of it to a brush with grains.
-Try to erase certain bits of the font so that it appears to be eroded, this means choose a low opacity, so that you do not erase too much at a time.
-When you click to erase the font, a message will pop up saying that the layer needs to be rasterized, click ok, and begin erasing.

-Once you are happy with this, try changing the opacity of the layer, in order to make it look a little better.
-Flatten the image, once you are ready.
-You may want to add some more brushes on a new layer, with soft light selected. This will add to the effect of the picture.
Flatten the image once again, and click save.

Congratulations, you've completed your first grunge sig.

Here's my final copy:



How did yours turn out?

 

Very nice tut, i'll try this sometime.

 

amazing guide... heres wat i made thanks alot....

 

AWESOME TUT!! thanks a lot man... gonna test it out soon.

 

very nice thanks for this guide kudos!!

 

bad tutorial,

the overall effect is weak, I could make a better sig with that render without whoring it up with downloaded grunge brushes.

 

thanks , he is good tut!