Tech Sig Tut that you've all been waiting for!!

[windybone]

Here is my long awaited tutorial on how to make my sig (except the border, will be done at a later date) Enjoy!

For scan bars, see http://www.mmowned.com/forums/graphi...signature.html

In this Tutorial I will show you how to make a signature like this.






Part 1 Getting Started


1. Make sure you have Photoshop and tech,nightsky (stars), and rust'n'grunge brushes. It doesn't really matter whats important is you have the tech brushes.



2. Make a new canvas of size 350px X 150px (with transparent background).



3. On the first layer go to Filters - Render - Clouds. You can keep pressing Ctrl+F until you get the cloud that you desire. I have this.

Part 2 Brushing

4. With your brush tool start to use your rusty/grungy brushes. This really doesn't matter that much as it is only precise detail. Choose random ones and brush it onto a layer. Also make sure to change the color of the brush to sometimes white and sometimes black. Do it over several layers, make 1 layer white, 1 layer black, and so on. This is what I got, remember do what you feel looks best keep brushing until you feel it looks good.





5. You might want to add in some abstract brushes, like I have done above.

Part 3 Renders

6. You should now look for a good render. For this kind of tech style sig you will need to find special types of renders such as mechanical, robots, cars etc. The render that I used is below.



(Sorry it's a little big )

7. Now you need to cut out the render and resize it. Before you resize it make sure you render is in a new canvas, not the same canvas as your sig. Now go to Image - Image Size, and put in these options Tick Scale Styles, Constrain Proportions, Resample Image - Bicubic Smoother. Put the height and width to what you feel is best but somewhere around width 250, height 350 is good.



8. Now drag the render layer into the canvas of the sig. To do thisyou left click on your render holding onto the button, and then drasgging it into the sig canvas.



9. Now your render should be in the sig canvas. Make sure your render layer is selected and then press Ctrl+U. This is where we are going to lower the colour of the render so we can then better blend the render. Lower the saturation to -50 or any other number you like.





10. Whilst the render layer is still selected, go to Layer - Layer Style - Drop Shadow, and leave the settings to default and click Ok.



11. One more thing before we finish off the rendering part. Whilst your render layer is selected still, take out the ol' Lasso Tool and on the top change the Feather to about 20px.





With your Lasso Tool, now go around your render but don't do it too carefully, carelessly go around the render.



Before After



Then proceed to going to Layer - Add Layer Mask - Reveal Selection.



Hopefully you should have something like this.


[IMG]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/1079/somethingl****thisprt11lv8.png[/IMG]

Part 4 Finishing it off

12. Above all the other layers make a new layer which will be our border layer. Now press Ctrl+A and go to Edit - Stroke and put these settings in.





Do this again but for the size put 2px and for the colour choose a different colour that isn't the same as all the other colours in the sig, for example I chose red. Now finally do this again but put colour back to black, and size 1px. Should look like this.





13. Whip out your Magic Wand Tool and click on the red bit (Or the colour you cose) and then press delete on your keyboard.





14. Just to make sure you're on the right track so far you have these layers in this order.

Border

Render

Layers of brushes

Clouds


15. Right... Above your brushes layers, make a new layer and start using Nightsky Brushes. As I said before, just choose random ones and brush it onto the layer. Make sure to change colour of brush to white also, do this brushing on several layers.





16. Now ere's what you have been waiting for. This part we use the tech brushes. Whip out your tech brushes and create a new layer above your nightsky brushes layer and put these Blending Options on it by going to Layer - Layer Style - Drop shadow.






From now on whenever you create a new layer for the tech brushes, just put in those settings. Now start brushing away with your tech brushes. Make sure to change the colour of the brush to white. Do this on several layers. For each layer of brushes you have, try to lower the Opacity of that layer to make it look better. You just need to tweak it up until it looks right for you. Here is my result. As you can see some things are very faint, others arn't.





17. Nearly there guys. Now we just need to add some colour into the sig to hopefully make it look better Before we do that lets make sure we are on track again, have the layers in this order.

Border

Render

Layers of tech brushes

Layers of Night sky brushes

Layers of abstract/rust/grunge brushes

Clouds


18. Ok now select the render layer and go to Layers - New adjustment Layer - Color Balance. Now a new window should pop up. In the Tone Balance part choose Midtones. In the Colour Balance part, just tweak it until you get the colour you desire.



19. Repeat steps 18 a few times, and this is my result.





20. (Optional) I did this because my sig looks a bit light or faded. I'm going to make it stand out more go to Layers - New adjustment Layer - Brightness/Contrast. Now mess around with the settings tor make your sig better to how you feel it looks good.

Part 5 Text

21. Make sure your on the right track again.


Border

Brightness/Contrast Layer

Colour Balance Layers

Render

Layers of tech brushes

Layers of Night Sky brushes

Layers of abstract/grunge/rust brushes

Clouds


22. Since we are making a tech sig, you need a tech font. I recommend Acens or 01 DIgitall. Check them all out at Download fonts | dafont.com. To add the subtext like me use Visitor font.



23. After you have your desired font, put the text into the sig under the colour balance layer. Now you just add Blending Options to the text layer to make the sig blend in more.



Final Product

Please give feedback and let me know If i have made any mistakes (it's a lot of information to get right, sorry if there's tpyos)

[Elites360]

ill have to try this one out.. ill +Rep you tomorrow...i have the 24 hour Thingo.

[windybone]

ill have to try this one out.. ill +Rep you tomorrow...i have the 24 hour Thingo.

Nice one

[Remahlól]

A very nice and clean written tutorial, nice job Windybone.

I have to wait 24hrs until I can rep you again.

Just a little question, where did you get the tech brushes from? deviantART?

[windybone]

Ok thankyou, also for the rep you gave me before and the nice comment ...

And yes I got them from deviant art, Big Brushes 200 Tech Brushes by ~WuRklash on deviantART and the second version of them BB 200 Tech Brushes Vol. 2 by ~WuRklash on deviantART

[Poofy]

Wow awesome. Thanks so much. +Rep

[windybone]

A lot of people wanted to see how I made my sig so ya know I put my work aside to do a tut :P

[xxmnmxx]

imo the sig has too much tech/too green but it was a good tutorial
pretty user friendly.
for that i +rep you

[windybone]

You could also end up with something like this...

[xxmnmxx]

You could also end up with something like this...

yea i like that better. all i meant was like a well blended sig with a few tech brushes but that is good

[Saiynsorry]

Good job