Mop shows us how to make an awesome sig - even if you have little photoshop experience.




Requirements

• Photoshop (I have cs2 but any other ps version should be fine.)
• Some cool pictures.
• Prolly a font that flows with the style, www.dafont.com

A good sig size that is neither too massive or too small (in my opinion) would be 500x200 pixels. You need to find pictures you would like to use as a background, and possibly more to add on, such as my mop_southparkV3

1.For mine I'm starting with a 500x200 canvas, a very pretty alex grey painting as a backdrop, and my new south park character playing the seven string guitar that should show at my house in a couple days [**offtopic**]. Open up all the images you want to use in your sig with PS.



2.First I need to reposition my backdrop to go horizontally along with my sig. I do this through image>rotate canvas> 90 degrees CW


3.After it is in line with my sig, I resize (image>resize image) the backdrop until it will fit into my sig the way I like. When it does, I use the square select tool in topleft corner of toolbar to copy/paste it into my sig.



4. Now I will use the same process to put my southpark character into the frame, only now when I'm done, I will put a stroke (outline) around sp_mop. You can stroke selections through edit>stroke.


You may be bothered by the layers piling up in the layerwindow (bottom left), but don't combine them yet; one of the last steps is taking care of all your layers.

5.Now that I have my backdrop and character in place, I gotta stick my name somewhere, this is where downloading your font comes in.


6.Use the horizontal type mask tool, by right clicking the T button in the tool bar. Using the font selection left behind after I type, I move my M over a part of the image I want my letter to recreate.




7.I copy that, and paste/stroke the letter in a different position, leaving a neat lil effect.



8.I recreate the same process to get my P done, then allow alex greys wonderful painting to fufill the O's spot.


9.Alot of people may not notice the O, so I'm going to make it stand out some more.

(1) I'll select the o and a bit of the surround expansion stick thingys and copy/paste in the same spot so that I have the same exact thing, but on a new, workable layer.


(2) Now in the new layer, I'll go layer>layerstyle> outer glow, and toy with the settings untill I get an effect that I'm satisfied with.



10. With that done, I'll select both the layer with my new glowing o, and the original backdrop, then rightclick>merge layers, so it's as if I never even edited Alex's gray portion.


11. Now comes what is probably the trickiest part of the sig. I want to make a better looking border, so, making sure I have my backdrop layer selected, I use the rectangular marquee tool (check step three for tool description) to make an even white border on the lengths, along with the widths. then I select the whole image, select>all, and deselect (Alt+click) the white border(s) with the magic wand tool.



12.Now, remember the way we copy pasted the O in my name in the same spot? Do the same exact thing to the blue backdrop, only now, in your new layer, go to layer styles, and choose drop shadow instead of outer glow. Toy with the drop shadow settings until you get a pleasing result. For a nice little touch, I'll stroke the blue backdrop white, making a cool little seperation between the shadow.

Finally, I want to stroke the exterior of my sig black, defining the edges and bringing it all in.


13. Now, I really love this painting, and I like my southpark character, but he's taking up too much if the image. I want hI'm to blend with the image some, getting a good taste of the whole sig. I do this through selecting the layer that I wish to blend, and setting my opacity meter to whatever floats my boat, (I like 75% for this one).


14. Finally, we can merge all those annoying layers. Select them all and merge them the same way we did with my letter O layers.



And here you have the finished product.

Thanks for your time, teh mop.