Skilled Illusionist
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2009
- Messages
- 352
- Reaction score
- 10
Level: First steps
Art style: Forum signature
Techniques: Downloading and using renders, using layer styles, downloading and using brushes, use of text and use of simple blurring tools
You will need: Photoshop (I'm using CS4), This image (The menus I highlighted in green you should get familiar with), internet access.
First, have a play around with the tools, draw and play with images so you don't find the whole interface confusing and daunting.
Okay to start with find a render, I use Planet Renders v4.1 you're going to want to create an account so you can view and download full sized renders. For this tutorial I'm want to use a character which is animated - not literally but it should have a good pose which shows some kind of action. I chose this mech.
Next open photoshop and create your document, start with 500x200 and use the crop tool, adjust it to a size you like, I made mine a tiny bit bigger than the default size. Next open the render, it will open in a new tab. First you'll want to remove some kind of water mark. Using the select tool make a box round the text or image and push delete. Now just use Ctrl-A (select all), Crtl-C (copy) and move to the first tab and do Ctrl-V (paste). Now you may notice that your image is way to big to use, simply use Ctrl-T (transform) to make it smaller. You'll want to link the width and height so it doesn't look distorted, this button here. You'll want to put it near the left or right of the signature.
Now we want to create a nice grungey background. For this we need some nice grungey brushes, although you really want to find some soft brushes and these work best for backgrounds. Free Photoshop Brushes at Brusheezy! is a good site and has some nice brushes. I will be using these. Grunge brushes always works well as a background and create a nice depth effect. Ice brushes also tend to work well as well. Adding brushes is relatively simple. Download and extract the .abr (brush) file. Build up a nice black soft background, leaving some white areas. Then on top build a nice white touch, not too much. Change the layer style from Normal to overlay on the white layer. This looks cool, but we can do better. Select the black layer, head over into Filter > Sharpen > Smart sharpen. Adjust it to your liking I felt the default settings looked good. Add any more white you think would benefit it.
Awesome, now we're going to give the background some color. Start by copy and pasting your render in a new layer loads of times. Make sure all the copies are in the layer (but not the original). Then head up to Filter > Blur > Motion blur. Set it to a diagonal pattern and make it really blurred. Set this layer to Vivid light, you'll add another dark flavor. Duplicate the layer and use Ctrl-U (Hue and Saturation), up the saturation and set the layer to overlay, you may want to do this a few more times to get a nice dense color. Now the chances are your color doesn't match your render. To fix this go to Layer Adjustments > Photo Filter. Then right click on the photo filter and push create clipping mask, make sure this is the layer just above the render. This means that it will only affect our render and not the background, this way you can edit the color to create your effect match. I used a orange filter and set it to 25% density.
It still looks off doesn't it. We can add very simple adjustments to make the render fit in, then we'll go on to talk about lighting. Start by duplicating the render layer and moving it behind the old render (you may have to reclip the Photo Filter). Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, make it quite high. Then go to the render and add an Outer Glow. To do this go right-click on the layer and go to Blending options. We want to pick a color which will be a tradition from the color of the render to the background, I chose dark orange/brown, give it quite a low Opacity and a high size.
Next we're going to talk about lightning. This is hard to master, but we can tackle it a little now. See how our render has some harsh direct lighting, the light isn't spread out which makes the signature look a little weird. We're going to a cross light, first make a black layer using a brush then go to, Filter > Render > Lighting Effects. We want to add more bloom to the image. So change the drop down to Crossing, play around. It's not going to be perfect or even good. Then set your layer to Color Dodge, this will make the image look bright. You can adjust it by changing the opacity. but a nice even light is what you want, as long as the source looks okay. You may now want to get a big black brush and manually shade the rest of the signature. Multiply works well for shadows.
Okay and finally text. Text is really up to you. I used a orange/brown color using the font RussleSquare. I then used the brushes here to add some nice tech effect. Here's the finished signature.
Note: I have a very high brightness and vibrancy monitor
Art style: Forum signature
Techniques: Downloading and using renders, using layer styles, downloading and using brushes, use of text and use of simple blurring tools
You will need: Photoshop (I'm using CS4), This image (The menus I highlighted in green you should get familiar with), internet access.
First, have a play around with the tools, draw and play with images so you don't find the whole interface confusing and daunting.
Okay to start with find a render, I use Planet Renders v4.1 you're going to want to create an account so you can view and download full sized renders. For this tutorial I'm want to use a character which is animated - not literally but it should have a good pose which shows some kind of action. I chose this mech.
Next open photoshop and create your document, start with 500x200 and use the crop tool, adjust it to a size you like, I made mine a tiny bit bigger than the default size. Next open the render, it will open in a new tab. First you'll want to remove some kind of water mark. Using the select tool make a box round the text or image and push delete. Now just use Ctrl-A (select all), Crtl-C (copy) and move to the first tab and do Ctrl-V (paste). Now you may notice that your image is way to big to use, simply use Ctrl-T (transform) to make it smaller. You'll want to link the width and height so it doesn't look distorted, this button here. You'll want to put it near the left or right of the signature.
Now we want to create a nice grungey background. For this we need some nice grungey brushes, although you really want to find some soft brushes and these work best for backgrounds. Free Photoshop Brushes at Brusheezy! is a good site and has some nice brushes. I will be using these. Grunge brushes always works well as a background and create a nice depth effect. Ice brushes also tend to work well as well. Adding brushes is relatively simple. Download and extract the .abr (brush) file. Build up a nice black soft background, leaving some white areas. Then on top build a nice white touch, not too much. Change the layer style from Normal to overlay on the white layer. This looks cool, but we can do better. Select the black layer, head over into Filter > Sharpen > Smart sharpen. Adjust it to your liking I felt the default settings looked good. Add any more white you think would benefit it.
Awesome, now we're going to give the background some color. Start by copy and pasting your render in a new layer loads of times. Make sure all the copies are in the layer (but not the original). Then head up to Filter > Blur > Motion blur. Set it to a diagonal pattern and make it really blurred. Set this layer to Vivid light, you'll add another dark flavor. Duplicate the layer and use Ctrl-U (Hue and Saturation), up the saturation and set the layer to overlay, you may want to do this a few more times to get a nice dense color. Now the chances are your color doesn't match your render. To fix this go to Layer Adjustments > Photo Filter. Then right click on the photo filter and push create clipping mask, make sure this is the layer just above the render. This means that it will only affect our render and not the background, this way you can edit the color to create your effect match. I used a orange filter and set it to 25% density.
It still looks off doesn't it. We can add very simple adjustments to make the render fit in, then we'll go on to talk about lighting. Start by duplicating the render layer and moving it behind the old render (you may have to reclip the Photo Filter). Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, make it quite high. Then go to the render and add an Outer Glow. To do this go right-click on the layer and go to Blending options. We want to pick a color which will be a tradition from the color of the render to the background, I chose dark orange/brown, give it quite a low Opacity and a high size.
Next we're going to talk about lightning. This is hard to master, but we can tackle it a little now. See how our render has some harsh direct lighting, the light isn't spread out which makes the signature look a little weird. We're going to a cross light, first make a black layer using a brush then go to, Filter > Render > Lighting Effects. We want to add more bloom to the image. So change the drop down to Crossing, play around. It's not going to be perfect or even good. Then set your layer to Color Dodge, this will make the image look bright. You can adjust it by changing the opacity. but a nice even light is what you want, as long as the source looks okay. You may now want to get a big black brush and manually shade the rest of the signature. Multiply works well for shadows.
Okay and finally text. Text is really up to you. I used a orange/brown color using the font RussleSquare. I then used the brushes here to add some nice tech effect. Here's the finished signature.
Note: I have a very high brightness and vibrancy monitor
