Soldato
This tutorial has now got a followup Simple Border Tutorial
I know there are many websites in the sticky for tutorials, but I thought I would post a very simple guide to get you guys started as the list is rather overwhelming.
For the last two to three weeks I have been fulfilling people’s requests for signatures and so far I have done around 20 of them! What struck me is that many people who have Photoshop said they didn’t have a clue.
Well, for you lucky people and anyone else on the forums that has Photoshop and hasn’t given a signature a go yet, this is for you.
Just before I begin, this tutorial is for creating a very basic signature in quite a short amount of time [depending on your images]. This tutorial serves only as a basis for creating some very complex and, hopefully, amazing-looking signatures. The onus is on you to experiment and try new ideas. Also, a number of techniques I show you are techniques you will be using a lot in Photoshop. This tutorial was written for Photoshop CS. Everything in this tutorial should be possible with versions 6 upwards.
Right, that over with; here we go!
First of all you will want to open a new document and call it something like mySig. Since many of you will be using it on these forums the size you will want is a width of 400 and height of 75. You can have it smaller than this if you wish, it is up to you. You can leave the other settings and click OK. You should now be looking at a blank rectangle.
Thee next step is to find yourself an image that you want in your signature. This can be anything you like and is limited only by your imagination.
For the purpose of this tutorial I shall be using this image:
I only want Auron as part of my signature, and not the background. To get the portion of the image I want I could use one of several tools. I could use the Lasso tool, the Quick Mask or if I am feeling adventurous – the Pen Tool.
The method I am happiest with is Quick Mask. Open your image into Photoshop then press Q to get into Quick Mask Mode. Now you wont see any difference until you take a hard-edged black brush and start painting in the areas you want. You will notice it will make the area you paint a red colour. Keep going taking your time to go along the edges. Change the size of the brush if you need to get into smaller spaces and you can use a large brush for the inside.
After a bit of work you should have something like this:
Mine isn’t the neatest it could be but it will suffice for this tutorial. You lot, however, have no excuse!
Should your outline be a little rough and ready you can use the Gaussian Blur Filter to smooth out the edges a little. Simply go to Filter>>Blur>>Guassian Blur. For my Auron image I found a value of around 1.5 good enough to smooth out the edges. I can't imagine many images needing more than that. - Tip supplied by Chaos
Once you are happy with your masking, press Q again and your image should now have the marching ants around everything but your chosen item. Don’t worry, just press Shift+Ctrl+I and your selection will be inverted. Now press Ctrl+J and this will move your selection onto a new layer.
Assuming you took your time when masking your cut out should be perfect. Now take your Move Tool and click and drag the layer onto your mySig project.
This will create a new layer. Name this to something meaningful. I named mine Auron.
I know there are many websites in the sticky for tutorials, but I thought I would post a very simple guide to get you guys started as the list is rather overwhelming.
For the last two to three weeks I have been fulfilling people’s requests for signatures and so far I have done around 20 of them! What struck me is that many people who have Photoshop said they didn’t have a clue.
Well, for you lucky people and anyone else on the forums that has Photoshop and hasn’t given a signature a go yet, this is for you.
Just before I begin, this tutorial is for creating a very basic signature in quite a short amount of time [depending on your images]. This tutorial serves only as a basis for creating some very complex and, hopefully, amazing-looking signatures. The onus is on you to experiment and try new ideas. Also, a number of techniques I show you are techniques you will be using a lot in Photoshop. This tutorial was written for Photoshop CS. Everything in this tutorial should be possible with versions 6 upwards.
Right, that over with; here we go!
First of all you will want to open a new document and call it something like mySig. Since many of you will be using it on these forums the size you will want is a width of 400 and height of 75. You can have it smaller than this if you wish, it is up to you. You can leave the other settings and click OK. You should now be looking at a blank rectangle.
Thee next step is to find yourself an image that you want in your signature. This can be anything you like and is limited only by your imagination.
For the purpose of this tutorial I shall be using this image:
I only want Auron as part of my signature, and not the background. To get the portion of the image I want I could use one of several tools. I could use the Lasso tool, the Quick Mask or if I am feeling adventurous – the Pen Tool.
The method I am happiest with is Quick Mask. Open your image into Photoshop then press Q to get into Quick Mask Mode. Now you wont see any difference until you take a hard-edged black brush and start painting in the areas you want. You will notice it will make the area you paint a red colour. Keep going taking your time to go along the edges. Change the size of the brush if you need to get into smaller spaces and you can use a large brush for the inside.
After a bit of work you should have something like this:
Mine isn’t the neatest it could be but it will suffice for this tutorial. You lot, however, have no excuse!
Should your outline be a little rough and ready you can use the Gaussian Blur Filter to smooth out the edges a little. Simply go to Filter>>Blur>>Guassian Blur. For my Auron image I found a value of around 1.5 good enough to smooth out the edges. I can't imagine many images needing more than that. - Tip supplied by Chaos
Once you are happy with your masking, press Q again and your image should now have the marching ants around everything but your chosen item. Don’t worry, just press Shift+Ctrl+I and your selection will be inverted. Now press Ctrl+J and this will move your selection onto a new layer.
Assuming you took your time when masking your cut out should be perfect. Now take your Move Tool and click and drag the layer onto your mySig project.
This will create a new layer. Name this to something meaningful. I named mine Auron.
Last edited:
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I did add some shadow to the text though so I should get bonus points.
lol 
