How to make a simple sig.

Courtesy of Lirana of Norrath Studio Board and

The original post can be found here

This tutorial is for the beginner who is learning to create signatures in photoshop. It outlines some of the most basic principles in sig-making, and does not go very in depth. To learn how to do some of the more advanced techniques and frills, please check out the tutorials in the various libraries of this board, as well as those that can be found on the web.

In order to create a signature, there are a few things you will need: a photo-editing program (in this case, Photoshop is used), screenshots (of your subject, background, other props, etc... learn how to get a good one here), and an idea of the type of layout you want. For this tutorial, I am using the following two screenshots:





The first thing you will need to do is cut the character out of her existing background. Here, I used the polygonal lasso tool to outline the parts I want to keep. Use the shift button to add to your selection and the alt button to take away from your selection. Once you have the character outlined, it should look something like this:



Press shift+ctrl+i (or go to select --> inverse on the menu bar) to invert your selection. Press the delete key (edit --> clear) to erase the background. Press shift+ctrl+i one more time to reselect your character, followed by ctrl+c (edit --> copy) to copy your selection. Open up the screenshot that you have chosen for your background. Press ctrl+v (edit --> paste) to paste your character onto your background.



In your layer pallette, you will notice that there are now two layers. The bottom layer (which should be labeled "background") is the unaltered screenshot you chose. "Layer 1" should be the layer with your character. You can rename your layers by double clicking on their names to avoid future confusion. Renaming the background layer will make this layer moveable and editable.



Notice that the character is bigger than the background. This is not a bad thing if this is the effect you are going for. However, I want my character to be standing on the chessboard, so I will need to shrink her. Make sure that your character's layer is selected. You can tell you have the correct layer selected by the paintbrush icon next to the layer's thumbnail. Press ctrl+t (edit --> free transform). In the menu bar that opens, click the link icon. This will constrain your image so that your character stays proportional. In the width box, enter the percentage you would like to resize to. I chose 70%. Hit the enter key on the number pad twice to accept these values.



Using the move tool, drag the character to the position you would like. This is the part where you get to add all of those frills you want... hair, swirlies, props, etc. I am keeping this one simple, but feel free to play with as much as you want (though remember... sometimes less is more!). I thought that both layers were a bit dark, so I adjusted the levels (ctrl+l or image --> adjust --> levels) of each layer individually. Once you have all of your frills in, create a new layer by clicking on the note paper icon on the bottom of the layer pallette. Make sure your new layer is the top most layer. Press shift+ctrl+alt+e to stamp all visible layers onto this new layer.

I know I want my final sig's dimensions to be 500x100. Press m to select the marquee tool. Apply the settings below, then select the are you want to be included in your sig.



Copy this selection by pressing ctrl+c. Press ctrl+n (file --> new) to create a new document. The pop-up window should have the dimensions of the area you selected, so you will not need to change anything here. Press enter to accept these settings. Press ctrl+v to paste your image onto the document. Now we will resize the document to the actualy sig size. Go to image --> image size. Enter "500" into the width box. The heigh should auto adjust to 100. Press enter



I want to add my character's name to the sig. Select the text tool by pressing t. Type in your text using your font of choice. Here, I used century gothic at a size of 30 px. Apply any special effects you woud like by clicking the "f" (layer style) button on the layer pallette. I added a 2 pixel stroke to my text. Create a new layer for your border. Press ctrl+a (select --> all). Now go to edit --> stroke to create your border. These are the settings I used.



To save your signature, go to file --> save for web. I saved this sig as a .jpg with high quality. This will result in a sig file that is still less than 20k. When saving your sigs, make sure you pay attention to both the quality of the image as well as the file size. What good is having a high quality image if it takes too long for anyone to download? The final result looks like this: