Photoshop - Complete beginner guide to making a signature

1.0 Purpose:​

The purpose of this tutorial will be to teach absolute newcomers how to create a simple signature using Photoshop. I will go through each step in detail assuring you that you will be able to make a nice looking signature.

2.0 Contents:

1.0 Purpose

2.0 Contents

3.0 Choosing A Render

4.0 Creating Your Sig
4.1 Deleting The Background
4.2 Resizing Render
4.3 Background
4.4 Smudging
4.5 Layer Style
4.6 Stroke
4.7 Text

5.0 Adjustment Layers
5.1 Gradient Map
5.2 Hue & Saturation

6.0 Products


3.0 Choosing a render:​

The render of your signature is the image that will be the centre of the signature that the other techniques will be centered around.
I suggest www.planetrender.com to choose your render or www.deviantart.com and search "Render Pack". You are looking for something similar to http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=photoshop%20render%20pack&order=9&offset=72#/d1kpnmg
Downloaded render packs are great because they are usually high quality pictures with out a background so you will be able to skip the next step.

4.0 Creating your signature:​

Now you have chosen your render it is now time to begin your signature. First open your render up using Photoshop. For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using the following render.

4.1 Deleting the background:​

There is several ways to delete a background and in this tutorial I will show one of the simplest. The technique may not work with dark renders but for beginners it is the quickest and most effective.

Right click on the eraser shown on the right hand side tool bar and it will show this...

Click on magic eraser tool. Look up the top left of your Photoshop window and you will see "Brush: (Black circle) 82 (size of brush here)
Click on the black circle and you will be able to change the diameter and hardness of the brush. Change the diameter to something that will work well using the eraser in the technique I will discuss next.
To the right of the black circle you will see "Limits:" set that to contiguous and the "Tolerance:" to around 40%.



Start erasing the background of you render and after a few minutes you will get the hang of it. Zoom in and out where necessary using the symbol of a magnifying glass on the tool bar and changing the size of the eraser accordingly.

Once you have deleted the background of your render move on to the next stage of the tutorial.

4.2 Resizing your render:​

First go File>New or Ctrl+N and on use the following settings.

Once you open ^^ go onto your other window with your render without the back ground and press Ctrl+A (Highlights all) followed by Ctrl+C (Copies highlighted) and then go back to the previous window and press
Ctrl+V (Paste).

You will now have something like this

As you can see the render no where near fits the size of the file so you will have to press Ctrl+T (Opens my size changing tool) and you will now see a series of small boxes. The next thing I will teach you, you will be using in nearly every signature you make so read the following carefully.
Hold down shift and drag any of the corner boxes inwards, once the corner box becomes off the screen or close to it let go of shift, move your mouse to the middle of the render and you will see a black arrow, you are now able to move the render. Move the render back to the middle of the screen and repeat until you reach our desired size.

When making a signature it is not necessary to use the whole render, you only need the head and main action. Note: My render does not have a white background I have put it there so you can see the size of the file.


The real creation begins now.

4.3 Background:​

Choose the eyedropper tool out of the tool box on the right and click on one of the main, bright colours in your render. Down towards the bottom of the tool box you will see this new colour and another colour (Most likely white). Click on the other colour and do the eyedropper again on another colour.


Now we want a gradient background so do the following. On the tool bar right click on the Paint Bucket and you will see the Gradient Tool icon. Click the gradient tool icon and now look at the top of the window for the colourful section. Click it and then choose the first picture if not already chosen.



Now press Ctrl+Shift+N (Create new layer) and name it Background. Whilst on the gradient tool move your mouse over the file and click and drag a diagonal line like the following...

This will leave you with a coloured background on top of your render so you must go over to the right hand side and click and drag the background below the render.

4.4 Smudging:​

I will now teach you the first technique for making this signature.
Click on the render layer to make sure we are working with if and press Ctrl+J (Duplicate layer) 5 (Five) times.
Click on the smudge tool and then open up the smudge options.


You will be using the following settings to smudge the copies of the render...


Just to the left of where you choose which layer you want to work on there is a little symbol of an eye clicking it hides the layer (Unable to be seen on sig).
Hide every layer except Layer 1 Copy (Layer can be replaced with name of render layer).

Using the smudge tool smudge it so it looks similar to the following...

Smudge the other 4 (Four) copies and remember you do not want them looking identical or the next step will not work.

4.5 Layer Style:​

Just above the layer selection panel you will see a drop down bar with the word normal next to it. Click it and make your first copy Linear Dodge (Add), your second Screen, third Linear Dodge (Add) and follow the pattern up to filth.

Reveal all the layers you have created and you should have something similar to this.

At the moment this is looking pretty boring so the next few quick and easy steps will make the overall sig look much better.

4.6 Stroke:​

Grab your Rectangle Marquee Tool on your tool box and draw a box around something in the sig that grabs your attention. In mine I have chosen the eyes for this. Once highlighted press Ctrl+C followed by Ctrl+Shift+N followed by Ctrl+V. Highlight the new cut out on the new layer using once again the Rectangle Marquee Tool, right click it and choose the option stroke.



Type 2 in the width, select the colour to be black and leave the other settings on default.

Once you complete this duplicate it 3 (Three) times by pressing Ctrl+J and move them around so that look like my finish copy below.

It is messy having three new layers for the cut out section you have done so where you can choose the layer you want to work on hold down Ctrl and click on the three layers you have created. Release Ctrl and now press Ctrl+E (Blend selected layers). To finish with the selection that you have cut out set the layer to overlay.

Go down to your background layer and select it. Use the stroke technique I taught you to give the background a border of black with 3 (Three) pixels.
You will now have something similar to this...

4.7 Text:​

Text is very important in a signature. It is not necessary but if you do use it you must use it correctly. I will not go into a lot of depth on different ways to use text but I will show you one effective way.
Select the T in the tool box and drag a text box in the general area that you want the text in your sig.
This is how my text turned out and this is the setting I used for the word Sonic...

this is the settings for the word Power...

Feel free to use whatever settings you like and play around with making your text look nice.
This is my sig so far...



5.0 Adjustment Layers:​

Create a new later Ctrl+Shift+N and apply image.

Now we are going to create some adjustment layers.

Unfortunately every sig will be done differently at this point but I will show you what I did and how it changed my sig.

Create a new adjustment layer and I recommend using Gradient Maps and
Hue & Saturation for your first attempt.

5.1 Gradient Map:​

Once you choose gradient map you will find a new option on the right hand side of your screen. Click the drop down arrow and choose and of the gradient map colours, set the layer to overlay and lower the opacity to around 50% (Depending on personal preference).

I would advise completing 2-3 of these on your sig, one black and white and the other two can be any of the colour choices.

5.2 Hue & Saturation:​

After fiddling with the gradient maps, create a new adjustment layer and choose hue & saturation. On the new option to the right fiddle with the hue and saturation bars to find something you like and once again set the layer to overlay and change the opacity to below 50% or what you prefer.

6.0 My Products:​

Credits:
All credits for this guide go to myself except
Fallen from Deviant Art

Thank you for reading/viewing my first guide please comment and point out any mistakes I have made.[/CENTER]

 

This is a fantastic guide. I have next to know experience/Knowledge with GFX and everything in your guide explained it clearly.

First, I'll speak about the presentation. The first thing I recognised was the fantastic balance of images and text. While you do have a lot of pictures, all of them are somehow helping to reader to understand what is in your text. You have also done well by splitting the guide into a handful of subsections, again making it easier for the reader to understand. My only criticism is your font looks a little plain, however that is definitely not a major issue.

Next comes the text. It's a little harder for me to critique this because I don't know if you've missed anything vital (As I stated before I am a complete GFX noob) but it seems everything that is needed is there. The guide "Flows" and describes everything well. Also, your grammar and punctuation is good. I haven't been able to find any issues.

I've come away with a lot of new knowledge from this guide. I'm not exactly an "arty" type of person but you've given me the motivation to give this a try. It's a great guide, and I hope to see you going for User Educator one day.

As a rating, I'll give you 5/5 for information/text and 4.5/5 for formatting.

 

Omg,i am a student of photoshop,never seen such a great guide

Ctrl + D

Bookmarked

Thnx man

 

Thanks for both of your comments.
@ Brendan W Thanks for the critique and have taken on board some of the things you said and will work on more tomorrow
@Ultimatious Thanks for that Good too see it helps some people

 

Just thought I'd quickly add, this guide would be great in the GFX Help, Tutorials and Advice section

 

Do you suggest having it there as well as in his section?

I can do that next time I am on my pc

 

Well it is essentially a GFX guide and some people may be looking for GFX guides in the GFX section and not the UE section and it can't do any damage.

 

Just did that now.
Thanks for the replies

 

This is a very good guide on the basics of using photoshop. However, using dark blue makes the guide almost unreadable and annoying to look at. Please change the dark blue to something else, other than that, it is 9.5/10

 

Ok, Thanks for that.. I will change it.