[Broken] Basic Render Signature in Photoshop

[Fev]

We have some new guys in the workshop that don't really know how to work with renders, so I decided to make a tutorial. It will cover everything you need to know for making a render sig. I've kept the sigmaking basic however, because documenting all steps I usually do would just be too much.

Let's start.

1.The Render

What you first need is a render. A render is a cropped image, mostly showing persons or other living beings
The best source for them is Planetrenders. You have to register there, but it's quick and free.
Of course you can make renders yourself, I suggest using the pen-tool for it.

Finding the right render depends on what you want to do. Some things you should know:

1. Only use high-qualtiy renders. If you do them yourself, take your time and be accurate, the render is very very important.

2. You can change colours of your render. For example, if you want to use this one you'd have to make the signature blue. You can however change the colour by clicking ctrl+u (or image-adjustmens-hue/saturation) Now you choose the colour you want to change, in our example we want to change the blue glasses and shine to a green colour. Just push "Hue" to the left a little, and you have this outcome.
Now you can go ahead and make a green signature.

Now we can start with the actual signature.

2. The Size

The right image size is very important. Noobs tend to make their sig as big as possible, but smaller sigs can achieve a far better effect for the most time. I usually use a size around 430x140, with a transparent background.

3. Positioning your Render

Now put your render into it. It is probably too big, so press ctl+t to resize it. When you resize it keep the "shift" key pressed down, the render will keep it's proportions. How big you want it and where to put it depends on the render itself and your intentions, but generally it's best to put it close to the middle of your sig.

You better duplicate your render layer , just to be sure. Right click on the layer and choose duplicate layer. Set one of them to be invisible.

4. Background Basics

Now a background comes in. Make sure that it's big enough and matches the render's style. Resize it (don't forget to press "shift"!) and position it to your liking.
Put the background layer above the render, so you can concentrate on it.

From now on there are thousands of things you can do.
I want to make it look like my rendersoldier is moving, so I select the background layer (which ironically is in the foreground atm ) and click "filter->blur->motion blur". Play around with the settings a bit. Now put one of your render-layers on top of it. (We don't need the invisible one, we just kept it to have backup)

5. Improvements

We're now going to blend the Render with the background. Select the eraser tool from your toolbar and select a soft brush with ~50 pixels. Use something close to these settings:

Now just go around your the edges of your render and slightly erase some parts of it. If you have done something wrong, press ctrl+alt+z to undo your last step.

Now we go on and improve it. Create a new layer on top of all others, select "image->apply image" and duplicate it. This time we're gonna need the duplicated layer, so don't forget this step!
Select the top layer and set it to soft light. After that change it to "soft light" and lower the opacity until you like it.

Now Create a new layer. and with the marker tool select 2 main colours of your sig. (you can of course also choose other colours if you want to)

Go ahead and choose the Gradient tool:





Drag your mouse over your empty layer and you'll get this



Set it to "overlay" and lower the opacity until you like it. After that create a new layer and choose "image->apply image" again.

To get some focus to the render select your "blur" tool and blur around the render. Find some splatter brushes, create a new layer and brush in some different, but fitting, colours. Then set the layer to soft light. Add a text and you're done!

Those were just the basic techniques, of course you can go ahead and improve it a lot more, but I wanted to give you an overview. And remember, following a tutorial is not that hard, so after some practice you shoudl come along with your own ideas and don't just copy what I did.

[♖TMB Total War♖]

WOW thank you guy

[abbews]

Very good tutorial and I love the layout, may I use for my future tutorial?

And who will propose this for the Scriptorium? Raglan or Ratbag or someone else?

Great tut, + rep! (need to spread)

Will come with outcome very soon.

[Louis Lux]

Really simple to follow and usually render sigs have a good result.
Not really a big fan of render sigs because I think they sometimes lack personality and the many tutorials around make the sig scene appear homogeneous and monotonous, but i liked that you kept it simple and gave room for the person following the tut to make his own sig and inject his own personality.

I wouldn't however have chosen comic sans to write it...

[abbews]

My outcome:

[lolgast]

Great tut

[Wildrek]

Very nice man!

[Fev]

Very good tutorial and I love the layout, may I use for my future tutorial?

Of course.

Really simple to follow and usually render sigs have a good result.
Not really a big fan of render sigs because I think they sometimes lack personality and the many tutorials around make the sig scene appear homogeneous and monotonous, but i liked that you kept it simple and gave room for the person following the tut to make his own sig and inject his own personality.

I wouldn't however have chosen comic sans to write it...

Fixed the writing

And the goal of this tut was to give the very basics, because I think there are lots of people here that would like to do some simple render sigs. A noob at PS will follow this tutorial strictly and probably have a good outcome, and an experienced guy can make his own adjustments and make it look more unique, like abbews proved. So no matter whether you like render sigs or not, it's good to know at least their basics

[abbews]

I just figured, this will be similar to one of the classes if Photoshop Basic Course launch

[Fev]

Why don't you just copy it, it should be good enough, or isn't it?

[Maяcel]

great tutorial!

[Giovi]

Awesome work my friend simple but great tut+rep

[Killerbee]

Very well done Fereveldir

See, I said your name

[Blackomur89]

Thank you this is very useful. +rep

[Katsumoto]

Great tutorial, very easy to follow. Here's my noobish attempt

[Blackomur89]

And here is my result:



So what does everyone think?

[Fev]

Great tutorial, very easy to follow. Here's my noobish attempt

It's quite nice considering you didn't make any sigs before, but 2 things you should change
1. the render isn't very well blended it, don't use that much erasing, make it more subtle
2. Make the text smaller and place it on the pictures left side, a little below the guy's head

And here is my result:



So what does everyone think?

The background is barely visivle, and the render doesn't have any presence at all. Make it bigger and add some brushes.

[Raglan]

you know what fev, this has been a really useful tutorial, while i know how to do all this stuff, the concept about planing the signature and background has been really useful

thanks

[Katsumoto]

I had another go, how's this:

[Fev]

That one's really nice, maybe try to blend the render a little more, otherwise good.