Lake Sunset Manipulation

In this tutorial I will be showing you how to photo manipulate an image to create a cool sig. This is type of sig you will making:

Anyway, enough talking, lets begin the tutorial.

Firstly you will of course need to open up a new document, here are the settings I used:

Now you have opened up a new document, the next step is to find an image you want to manipulate. I used a picture of a Lake sunset in KY:

If your picture is too big then resize it enough so that it fits/looks good on your sig canvas. Here's my sig with the image added:

The next step is to duplicate your layer (ctrl+J) and then add a Gaussian blur by going to: Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian blur and using these settings:

Now set that layers mode to overlay. What I have so far:

Now you will need to make a new layer, getting out a brush and change your color to white. I used this brush:

Now you will need to tap the mouse about 6 times on different parts of the canvas and then set your layer mode to soft light. Here's what I have got so far:

If you want you can make another new layer and tap 1 or 2 more times on darker spots and set that layer mode again to soft light:

My layers so far:

Now you will need to go back to the bottom layer and duplicate it, then drag it to the top of your layer set and set it to soft light.

My layers so far:

Now I added a "channel mixer" by clicking this button:

an selecting Channel mixer.

Mess around with the setting yourself, until you think it looks good. Here's what I got after adding the channel mixer:

My layers so far:

Now make a new layer, pull out a grungy brush and change the color your using to black.

Now brush the corners of your sig by tapping your mouse a few times on each corner, change the layer mode to soft light. Here's what I now have:

Now again select:

but this time click on the option that says "selective color". once again just mess around with the settings and once your happy press ok.

My sig now looks like this:

My layers so far:

Now it's time to add some text. I used text Verdana at size 8. The colors I used were colors that featured a lot in the sig, I also lowered the opacity to 80% which made the text fit in better with the sig. Here's my sig with text attached:

To me it didn't look complete so for some finishing touches I added a line between the text using the "line tool". I also added a little pattern by the text simply by grabbing the Rectangular Marquee Tool and making a little square by the text like this:

To add the pattern simply hover the mouse over the box you made, right click and select Fill. Choose yourself a nice pattern and press ok.

After adding the fill patterns this is what my sig looks like:

After this you will want to add a border. To ad this simply make a new layer on top of all your others and "select the layer" (press Ctrl+A). After that go Edit>>Stroke then make a 1 px border of a color of your choosing and press ok. I choose a black border.

My sig is now complete, here are all its layers:

Here is my completed sig:

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and helped you out because that's why I made it.