SIMPLE SIGNATURE TUTORIALHey guys, I'm going to teach you guys how to make a sig similar to mines, the Artest one. It's not all that, but it's pretty simple and neat and it's great for beginners! Obviously, what you'll need is :
-A picture, in my case, I'll be using the VC pic with his new uniform.
-Adobe Photoshop CS4
-And a can of soda, while you're at it. lol. (optional)
1. Open up a new document, named Signature, with the dimensions 475 x 110. Make sure the background is black.
(Hope I don't have to post a screenshot for this one.)
2. Select the gradient tool. (Now, I suggest you use something gray or dark gray, other than, colorful gradients don't look as good as the grey ones do.) Make sure you're doing this gradient on a new layer. And like I said if you want it dark gray, just lower the opacity of the layer.
3. Now open you picture and crop whichever way you like. I chose this pic :
4. Now once you've cropped your picture paste it on the Signature document. Now position it on the left side like my Artest sig, and now we're going to add some effects on it. First off,
-Duplicate the picture layer
-The copy layer, set it's blending mode to "Overlay".
-Select the original layer of the picture, and go to Image -> Adjusments -> Desaturate.
**NOTE**Don't forget to resize the image by going to Edit -> Transform -> Scale
And also, make sure you organize your layers by naming on right clicking the layer and going to layer properties.
5. Now we're going to add some lighting effects. Create a new layer, by holding Ctrl+Shift+N. Press Ok.
Select the brush tool on the right hand side. Make sure the size of it is 12 px. Now make a straight horizontal line by hold shift on your keyboard. And then make a straight line, ALWAYS BY HOLDING SHIFT. Then change the blending mode to "Screen". It should look like this.
**MAKE SURE THE COLOR OF THE BRUSH IS BLUE LIKE THE JERSEY**6. Now here comes the hard part, this is where you have to be creative. For the experts in Photoshop, it's pretty easy, but for the beginners it's going to be pretty hard. The same layer, the lighting one, go to Filter-> Blur-> Gaussian Blur.
Make the radius 6.3 Pixels. Then duplicate the layer and position it anywhere else in the document. Basically move it a bit to he left and a underneath of the previous layer. It and the copied layer, there should be a part cut off on the right hand side. Just use the Eraser tool to erase it a bit.
7. After erasing the left-overs, duplicate the layer again. But this position it a bit down, where his jersey is. After go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur. Leave it at 6.3 pixels like before. Erase the part going outside of the picture.
8. After you're done doing all that, merge all the lighting layers together by hold Ctrl+E. If you wish now, you could lower the opacity or whatever.
9. Now the only thing now left is the text. Select the Text tool, I chose the font "Franklin Gothic Medium". What I did was I typed in Carter in Capitals and chose the size 140. Make sure it's black and position it like mines.
Then move the text layer under the Picture layer.
10. Now what you do is you right click on the Text Layer, and go to blending options. There should be a box now. Apply these settings below and hit Ok.
11. All there's left to do now is to reduce the opacity of the text layer to 30% and that's it. Now just hold Shift+Ctrl+E to merge all layers. If you want to add borders like mine. Just Select all by holding Ctrl+A. Then Go to edit-> Stroke
Choose 2 Px, White and make sur it's inside. Then Select All again, go to edit-> Stroke, 1 Px, Black, Inside. Thats it!
Here is the result:
Hope you guys like it, and if have any questions, just post underneath and I'll more than happy to help you guys out!
