Dark Signature

Okay, here's what you will need for this tutorial.

• Photoshop CS and above
• Some sort of skill in photoshop and knowledge of its tools
• A couple of really good abstract brush sets   (see end of tutorial)
• Imagination... without it you are nothing.

Please remember, every sig will have a different outcome and may differ from the intents of the tutorial.

Tutorials are designed so you learn how to do something, not how to copy a style.

Step 1: Create a canvas that you use for a usual sig size. Mine will be 333 x 125 pixels. Set the background to black.

Step 2: Okay, pull out your brush set and brush 2 or 3 times, with a white brush, on the background layer. Then create a new layer, and brush a little more white, not to much. Now, at random create new layers and alternate between black and white brushing. It's best to get some sort've brushes with texture to give the sig a good feel.

Step 3: Now, create a brand new canvas. Follow the steps above, but only brush about 3 layers or so. Now when that is done, hit Ctrl A, and your entire sig will be selected. Now go Edit> Copy Merged. Click on your original sig, and paste it onto the uppermost layer. Now set it on Overlay to give it a good contrast.

Step 4: If you don't like the darkness/brightness ratio, use a Contrast balance layer. Now, we are going to add some color to it. Since my render is red, and I want it to blend in I am going to use these

Shadow: +47, 0, -30
Midtones: +61, 0, -55
Highlights: +29, +1, -30

And you should get this:

Step 5: Looking good so far. Now we need to get a render. I generally use Gamewallpapers.com

Find a render that you like and once you have saved it to your desktop open it up in Photoshop and scale it down to fit your sig. I am going to take that guy that is impaled, and just use the Crop Tool and paste him into the left side of my sig. Like so:

Step 6: Blending the render. Pull out the Lasso Tool and put the feather to something like 15. Now draw a very rough outline of the render, and click on the mask tool. It should blend the render into it quite nicely.

Step 7: Notice the render isn't very visible? Okay, duplicate the layer with the render and set it to overlay, or soft light, or hard light. I duplicated it 2 times, one on Overlay, and the other on Soft Light.

Now it stands out nicely:

Step 8: Okay, now. I am just going to add a pixel font text and a 3 pixel border.

And here's the finished product

Your layers should look like this:

Here's a list of good brushes to have an effect like this:

• F-erret's Abstract Set Two
• HyBrid Revival Set
• SnipaCX Abstract Set
• Abstract90