Smudge Signature

In this tutorial you will learn how to make a nice grunge tutorial, with the help of a technique called "smudging"

1. Start by opening photoshop and opening a new document, I used the following settings:

2. Now get out a great hot render, the more detailed the better

3. Now copy and paste the render onto a new layer in your photoshop document. Now open up some of your favorite grunge brushes and brush a bit on the left side of your render, use a color for the brushing that fits your render

4. If it gets to dark, just brush a bit with white on a new layer.

After you have done that open the smudge tool and select the following brush:

5. Now use the following settings to brush:

6. Now you have done that duplicate your render layer (right mouse on the layer and select duplicate). Then select the top render layer and smudge on the right side of your render. This is what you should have so far. It matters on how much you smudge on how good your sig will look. As you can see I also removed the chains from the render myself using the eraser.

7. Make sure you still got the smudged layer selected. Now go to filter>sharpen>sharpen. After you have done that go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask and use the following settings:

8. Now after you have done that take the smudge layer and go to filter>blur>gaussian blur and use the following settings and right after you do that go to edit>fade gaussian blur and use the settings I post below:

Now after you have done that your sig is almost finished and we will now add a border.

This border is pretty hard to do, but gives a really nice effect. For this border you will need to have some scanline patterns, you will need 2 patterns. One in black and the other one in white.

To make the scanlines open up a new document with a size of 3 by 3 pixels. Zoom into 1600% and make the top left, middle, and bottom right pixel black. Now go to edit>define pattern and give it a name. Now repeat this step again, but this time make the 3 pixels white

Now go back to your signature again and make a new layer on top off all other layers. Select the rectangular marquee tool and select the left half of the signature and go to edit>stroke and use the following settings:

Now do the same with the right side of your signature on a new layer.

Now on the right border use these settings:

And on the left border layer do the same, but this time use your white scanlines, because else you wont be able to see the border.

Now set both layers to soft light and add some nice text and you have finished your signature!