WiKi
How To
Rules
Ban
Unban
LA Staff
Maps
Streams
Show Posts
166
Resources / Basic Photoshop tutorial by Icypig
« on: October 19, 2010, 17:39 »
Hello guys, welcome to my basic Photoshop tutorial, oriented mainly for making your own signature/avatar.
I'm using Photoshop cause its obviously most popular program with huge resource database and massive editing options while being extremely user friendly and intuitive in use. You can get trial version from Adobe.com. Trial lasts 30 days which is not much but you can always buy it or reinstall system xD
So let's start. For forum utilities I recommend saving and working on .png format and RGB colors, unless you are making animated graphics and you are forced to use .gif
1) Dimensions :
Dimensions often used for signatures are pretty small ones and they go like around 300, 400, 500 pixels x 100, 200. You can use it as you like, but remember PD forum allows 200 max height of sigs, due to some abusive users. Avatar max allowed size is 150x150 px, but it doesnt mean that smaller ones would look worse.
2) Focal:
Focal is your main part of signature, on which you should focus your sight. You can use anything as a focal, but remember - its most important part of your signature (and avatar), don't overlay it with fonts, effects or other beautiful ideas. Here you have example of properly placed focal:
This man stands out from rest from of a background, so you can clearly say it's a focal.
Most important thing while you are making a sig is to combine a focal and a background which sometimes can be very hard and tricky, you need to take care of colors, opacity etc.
You could ask - Where to find good material for focal ? Basically, unless you are skilled painter you have to rely on other people artwork to make you own forum graphic. There are several ways of obtaining and using focal. Let me show, two most popular of them.
2) Renders:
Renders are parts of pictures which are cut from other, most probably high res graphic. Most renders which you can find on net are humans, cars, anime chars. The success lies in render placement, its influence on the background and vice versa.
If you have a trouble with finding proper render check this topic Photoshop resources
3) Stocks
Stocks are nothing more than normal pictures that can be modified with Photoshop by adding new brushes, effects and cutting a new signature out of it. Stock has its own focal, let me show you below:
This is stock picture, where panda is focal and you can now edit that whole picture as you like and make your own signature like this:
4) Text
Second most important thing in your graphics is text, especially its placement, size and blending.
Some people dont care really about it, and cause of this your font turns into a focal. Text can't overlay your focal! Try using as small font as you can, match colors with rest of the sig. Lowering its opacity and changing blend mode to soft light or overlay can help a bit. I'll give some examples later.
I'm using Photoshop cause its obviously most popular program with huge resource database and massive editing options while being extremely user friendly and intuitive in use. You can get trial version from Adobe.com. Trial lasts 30 days which is not much but you can always buy it or reinstall system xD
So let's start. For forum utilities I recommend saving and working on .png format and RGB colors, unless you are making animated graphics and you are forced to use .gif
1) Dimensions :
Dimensions often used for signatures are pretty small ones and they go like around 300, 400, 500 pixels x 100, 200. You can use it as you like, but remember PD forum allows 200 max height of sigs, due to some abusive users. Avatar max allowed size is 150x150 px, but it doesnt mean that smaller ones would look worse.
2) Focal:
Focal is your main part of signature, on which you should focus your sight. You can use anything as a focal, but remember - its most important part of your signature (and avatar), don't overlay it with fonts, effects or other beautiful ideas. Here you have example of properly placed focal:
This man stands out from rest from of a background, so you can clearly say it's a focal.
Most important thing while you are making a sig is to combine a focal and a background which sometimes can be very hard and tricky, you need to take care of colors, opacity etc.
You could ask - Where to find good material for focal ? Basically, unless you are skilled painter you have to rely on other people artwork to make you own forum graphic. There are several ways of obtaining and using focal. Let me show, two most popular of them.
2) Renders:
Renders are parts of pictures which are cut from other, most probably high res graphic. Most renders which you can find on net are humans, cars, anime chars. The success lies in render placement, its influence on the background and vice versa.
If you have a trouble with finding proper render check this topic Photoshop resources
3) Stocks
Stocks are nothing more than normal pictures that can be modified with Photoshop by adding new brushes, effects and cutting a new signature out of it. Stock has its own focal, let me show you below:
This is stock picture, where panda is focal and you can now edit that whole picture as you like and make your own signature like this:
4) Text
Second most important thing in your graphics is text, especially its placement, size and blending.
Some people dont care really about it, and cause of this your font turns into a focal. Text can't overlay your focal! Try using as small font as you can, match colors with rest of the sig. Lowering its opacity and changing blend mode to soft light or overlay can help a bit. I'll give some examples later.
