Information:

Please PM me with questions

This Guide is under construction.

This guide was completely made by me – Tee Bag

Platform: Adobe Photoshop CS4

Hey guys, alot of people have been asking me for some tutorials, so let's start with the basics.

Table of Contents.

Section 1: The Basics

Section 2: Creating your First BASIC Signature

Section 3: How to change an eye color

Section 4: Basic Abstract Smudging

Please take time to read the guide, it can be very helpful.

If you have any questions, let me know and i'll create a FAQ section.

Please PM ME WITH QUESTIONS.

Section 1: The Basics

Welcome to Adobe Photoshop, when you open up you're greeted with a screen that totally baffeled me

the first time I saw it. Not to worry, you can overcome!

Graphic Terms:

Brush - Certain 'patterns' that can be used like the 'spray' tool in paint.

Render - A picture with a transperant background.

C4D - Cinema 4D, these are 'objects' people have created, we'll learn about those later.

Layer - Each layer has a different "Effect, Brush, C4D, or Render" On it, it's the basis of making your

signature.

Grunge - A type of style in signature making. Looks kinda dirty, dunno how to describe it.

Smudge - The smudging tool smudges objects, adding a nice "background effect"

Filters - Add different filters to your signature.

Blending Options - Changes the way things blend in your signature.

Opacity - Changes the visiblity settings.

Basic Tools:

From Top to bottom:

1. Move Tool - Basic tool, used for moving renders and C4D's around.

2. Marquee Tool - Used for borders and for color windows.

3. Eyedropper Tool - Used to select a specific color in your render to incorporate in the background.

4. Brush Tool - Specific pattern, used to add effect.

5. Smudge Tool - Smudges parts of your signature, sometimes a key part in your signature.

6. Text Tool - Adds text to a signature.

These are the basic tools of Photoshop, and the only ones that are really value

to you until very, very, later on.

Using the Marquee Tool.

The Marquee tool is vital, in adding the finishing touch to your signature, it adds a border, or scanlines,

or a color box.

To use the Marquee tool.

Create a new layer.

Select the Marquee tool, and highlight the border of your signature. (You can just drag a random box)

Then go to edit, stroke, I usually use black, 2 Px, then click OK.

Right click and click deselect and your done.

Layers and Opacity

Layers - In red, the layers are the only tab you'll really ever use, layers are like a soccer team,

togeather they make the signature, and you can't have a signature without them.

Blending Options - In green, blending options change each types of layers blending settings.

Sometimes it makes a HUGE difference between one and the other, and sometimes they really bring

your signature

togeather.

Opacity - In the purpleish color, opacity changes the visibility amount of a layer. Sometimes, layers can

be too overpowering, and you'd want to change the opacity to lower this, it can mean a big difference,

when your signature is coming to a close.

Layer - In yellow, is a layer, it's a text layer actually, and that's what it looks like, you'll see the opacity,

and blending options for the layer which like I said can make a huge difference.

Eye - In the dark purple, the eye indicates the visibility of the layer (NOT LIKE OPACITY) it makes the

layer visible, or invisible, depending on if you want to work on other layers.

How to create a Layer -

Click the icon highlighted in Pink, and a drop down, or up (Lol) will pop up, click on new layer, and there

we have it.

Downloading Fonts, and Brush Packs.

Fonts

A good place to find them: Urbanfonts.com

Make sure you have winRAR, it's pretty self explanitory, you find a font you want, and download for

whatever system your using.

Mac/Windows, etc.

Then go to... Start > Control Panel > Search Fonts > and Drag the font into the folder and boom, you're

done.

You can now use this font in signatures.

Brushes

Brushes can make or break your signature and it's important to have nice brushes.

A nice brush site: Brusheezy.com

From here, you can find nice brushes for photoshop, download them, and drag them into your

photoshop window,

or you can right click them. Look for some brushes that look appealing to you, a nice collection to have

are Grunge brushes.

Hotkeys [IMPORTANT]

Hotkeys can be a very important part of your career, and can just make things easyer, let's get started.

Hotkeys everyone should know:

V - Selects your move tool.

Ctrl + T - Free Transform, allows you to resize your image, they can be rather large. RESIZE FROM

CORNERS.

Ctrl + J - Duplicates a layer, usefull for duplicating renders to create a background.

M - Selects your marquee tool.

Section 2: Creating your First BASIC Signature

Now that you know a bit of the basics, lets try our first signature shall we?

A good idea would be to open up photoshop, for all my signatures lately i've used these settings:

Try and use... Background Contents: Transperant.

Ok, now, we wanna try and find a nice render, so go to PlanetRenders.com

You need to register, and login to your account to continue, after that, search for what you want, click

on the image, so theres a screen that pops up, and save the image. Then open it in photoshop.

I found a halo render, so i'm going to use that, for this basic signature.

Open your render in photoshop and resize it with the CTRL + T hotkey. Drag from Corners, remember.

We need it a nice size, try and make the face the focal, not the arm, body leg. Use your artistic side.

Try and move it around, judge what looks best. Here's what i came up with.

Great job, once you have that down, we're going to

CREATE A NEW LAYER, SELECT THE NEW LAYER, and go to..

Filter (Top) > Distort > Clouds

Make sure your colors are black and white, you should get this...

Notice my layers.

Right then, now we'll need some grunge brushes... so if you haven't downloaded some already do that

now.

Right, now we'll create a new layer, and select a black grunge brush. and brush over the top, of the

clouds, just a bit, lower the opacity a bit and my result is:

Now, let's make about two more layers, and select some different brushes, lower the opacity, we can

also re-order the layers.

After two layers, some opacity changes, etc.

This is my result

Now, let's select our clouds layer, and go to..

Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation

We want to select colorize Play around with the Hue and Saturation, we want to make it match the

render kinda.

Result:

Now we're gonna drag our render to the top, place it around a bit.

and grab the marquee tool, right click on the icon and select elliptical marquee,

go to the top and put feather to 20 px, select random parts around the picture and press Delete,

try and soften up the render a bit.

Result:

Now, let's make a border, create a new layer, select the square marquee tool.

Drag it around the signature and go to...

Edit > Stroke > Try 2 px Border, and black, and click OK.

I'm not going to post the result, because it looks like the border in my signatures.

OK, let's duplicate the "Render" layer, with hotkey Ctl+J

Select the dublicated layer and find a cool blending option.

Result:

Adding Text

So let's select the text tool "T"

and click somewhere on the signature.

TEXT CAN MAKE OR BREAK THE SIGNATURE.

Make sure you keep it near the render, text is a really important part of the signature.

Make sure you do it right.

I lowered the opacity on the "HALO" text, in your layers window you can right click > blending options

and give it an outer glow like mine has: Result

Now you can play around, adding grunge layers, changing the opacity/blending options etc.

Final Result:

Look at other Tutorials on the web, and develop your own style.

Section 3: Changing Eyecolor.

This is just something fun I like to do, or people ask me to do.

So, let's start by finding a picture of an eye, somewhere on the web, I found this:

Alright, now we're going to go the the lasso tool..

and right click it and select, polygonal lasso tool.

Alright, now we're going to go around the outer edge of the eye, it doesn't have to be perfect.

When your finished circling the eye, make sure the starting and ending points are connected.

The dotted line around the eye, is my polygonal tool.

Now, with the polygonal tool still there. we're gonna go to...

Image > Adjustments > Hue & Saturation.

I didn't select colorize, but it's all up to you, so here's what I did

And here's what I got, and I added some text and stuff but the end result is:

You can add brushes or anything to spice it up a bit.

So yeah, you can play around with it a bit, it's kinda fun to do with your own eyes.

Section 4: Abstract Smudge Tutorial

Ok, so if you haven't already, download a nice selection of brushes.

I have like 200+ so yeah.

In this we're going to learn how to make a nice looking smudge signature.

We'll be using C4D's so try and look for some nice C4D packs, or get some cool looking ones off

planetrenders.

Try and make sure their pretty colorful

Alright, so we'll create a new canvas, 350x110 for me as usual.

Now take a large black brush, and make the entire canvas black, like this.

Ok, now put a nice C4D in, and if it has a black background, set the blending option to lighten.

NOW, we'll start smudging.. so first, select the smudge tool, it's shown in the first section.

Now at the top select a size 13 Hard brush.

Then we go to window > brushes and these are the settings I used...

Move the C4D around, find a nice part with alot of color, then gently smudge it, try and keep it all going

in one direction to develop a nice flow, i went from top left to bottom right, kinda stroke...

here's what I ended up getting.

Now, i'm going to add in another C4D, try finding something that goes nicely with the other color, and

blend it togeather.

Set the 2nd C4D on "screen" blending mode

I chose a nice blueish color, and smudged it in the same direction.

My result is this:

Repeat the process with one more C4d, this time set the layer to "Lighten"

Here's my result: I put a purple C4D in.

Final Steps

Ok, now that we're done with the background we still can do alot to improve this, so lets create a new

layer, on top of all the other layers and go to.. image > apply image and press on ok. W

ith this layer selected go to Filter > Blur > Smart blur and use the following settings: Their the defult

settings.

radius: 3.0, Threshold: 25.0, Quality: low, Mode: normal.

This looks kinda flat to me, so let's make a lightsource.

Create a new layer, and select your brush tool (b), and find the 200 Px Soft brush.

Brush a little bit wherever you want light to come from, I chose the top. I set the blending option of that

to Overlay

Here's my result:

If you think it's too dark somewhere, you can create a new layer, and repeat the step in the dark area.

Play around with the opacity a bit.

Looking great already, almost done.

I thought the colors were a bit dull so I did this.

Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradiant Map

and use this Gradiant map.

Now, I had a tough time deciding which blending option to use, but in the end I chose Hue.

Here's what I got.

As you can see gradiant maps really make a difference in the outcome of the Signature.

---

NOT NESSICARY, BUT HELPS. YOU CAN SKIP THIS.

To add some "Pizazz to our signature, I did this..

Create a new layer and go to..

Image > Apply Image.

Then we want to go to

Filter > Distort > Displace, and select a PSD* from a past sig.

Then we can select the eraser tool (E), and erase parts you dont like.

My result:

*PSD's are photoshop documents, which can only be opened in Photoshop, it's like you can save a word

document and edit it, this is like a editable photoshop document.

---

Border

Remember to use the Marquee tool and drag around the image to create a border.

I used 2px Black Border.

Text

Remember, adding text is a very important part, I used some simple text.

I changed the opacity on it a bit, and the colors to match the signature.

Remember to use the eyedropper tool.

Our Final Outcome!

Here are my layers:

Play around with it!