I posted a question on the new Tweeaks Facebook page asking what people would like to see on Tweeaks. So I made this forum signature tutorial for someone that requested it. I don’t think I am the best sig maker, but that doesn’t mean I won’t make a tutorial on how to make one. It doesn’t mean that anyone will try doing the tut, but it may be useful to someone somewhere.

What this tutorial is will teach you:

• how to make a grunge style design
• a nice looking forum signature
• keystrokes and shortcuts in Photoshop
• how to make a custom brush
• a bit of smudging
• and one tehcnique for making a light streak effect

I have never made a sig tutorial before, so if it isn’t that great let me know. If there is any part of this that doesn’t make sense or you have trouble with, post a comment and I’ll help you out.

Starting off…

Start off by first picking a stock or render that has a shiny surface so it will compliment the light effects nicely. For this tutorial I used this Crystal Ball Stock. If you choose to use this one, I made a quick render of it here but it isn’t perfect, just for the sake of making the tutorial quicker, so you can use that if you like.

Make a new document about the size of 410px by 180px, with a black background.
Paste your render, in my case a the crystal ball, into the canvas the way you want it to look, but don’t make it too big and is within the boundaries of the canvas.

Select the object by CTRL + clicking on the layer in the layer pallete, then go to Select > Modify > Feather, and set the feather radius to 1px. Press CTRL + Alt + I to inverse the selection, then press delete.

This is to make the edges less hard and rough looking so it will blend better.

Press CTRL + J to duplicate the layer, and change the blending mode on it to multiply. Lower the opacity to about 30% depending on your image.

Press CTRL + Shift + N to make a new layer, and if you need to CTRL + [ so the layer is under the crystal ball.

Use a radial gradient of any color you want fading to black, then drag out a gradient. Transform and position it so that it looks something like this.

Now open up any texture. The one I used is here on deviantArt and move it under the crystal ball layers, and above the gradient layer. Desaturate it to get rid of the color, in the main menu: Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. To make the white areas of the image transparent change the blending mode to multiply.

Double click on the bottom crystal ball layer to open the layer styles and add an outer glow with these settings.

Creating a custom brush…

Now we need to make a brush, so press (B) for the brush tool, and then F5 to open the brush pallete. Create a brush that will look good for the light strokes.

I used the 9px brush, but you may want to use a smaller size I learned after doing this. Around 5px or 6px seemed to be a good size. We just want to change the shape dynamics settings for control and minimum diameter. I played around with it until I got these settings below. If you want you can play around to find what you like best, but the goal is the make the starting point bigger than the end point.

Let there be light streaks…

Now press P to select the pen tool, and make sure you have it set to Paths

before you start drawing because it won’t work right otherwise. Draw a smooth curved line like the image below.

*Note: press A to select the direct selection tool (white arrow), which allows you to move the points of a path, and control the handles that come off the points. The path selectin tool (black arrow) allows you to move an entire path, also.

With the pen tool or direct selection tool still selected, right click on the canvas and select Stroke Path. Select brush from the drop down menu, and check the Simulated Pressure box and hit enter.

Double click on the newly made brush layer in the layer pallette to open the layer styles, and add a similar outer glow as we did before, but with the settings below.

You can right click on that brush layer and copy layer style, that way you don’t have to do that step every time, you can just right click new layers, and paste layer style. So, just create as many brush stroke layers as you want, and make the paths go in different directions, of different lengths to give it more depth.

I just resized the background gradient I made in the begininng, because the outer glow effects stand out much better. I also changed color of the bottom crystal ball layer, Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation, to match the color scheme of the image at this point.

Adding some action

Now find a render of a person or something else you want to use, or download this render pack of people, which has the render of the guy I used.

Place it into your image in a suitable spot so that it fits in with the crystal ball and brush strokes you have created. Then change the blending mode of the new render layer to hard light. You may need to do some touch ups to make it not look like its a person painted on a wall.

Next duplicate your person layer, CTRL + J, and move the duplicate layer below the other one. Change the blending mode of it to lighten, and lower the opacity as you see fit.

Try to make some of the paths of your brush strokes circle around your new person render. Do this buy drawing the path over the render, and making the brush stroke, then after that’s done, CTRL + click the person render layer and press delete, or use the eraser with a soft brush to make it blend more.

I duplicated the top person layer again, and moved it under both of the other person layers. Press R to select the smudge tool, and use any random brush with a size of about 90px, opacity 100%. Carefully smudge the edges of the bottom person layer, just a little bit, “…a small tweeak makes a big difference…“. You don’t need to make big movements of the mouse, just pull the edges out so you can see them.

If there are any edges of the person that look hard or don’t blend well after you finished smudging, use the eraser(E) tool, with a 40px soft brush, to erase the edges of whichever layer of the 3 person layers, that is causing the edge to not blend well. You don’t need to take much off, just the edge.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, the brush stroke lines in my example images keep changing, haha. It’s because while I am making this I decide I don’t like placement or look of the way one of them curves, so I have been deleting and remaking them.

Okay, so NOW that I think I am satisfied with my light streaks, as shown in this image, let’s continue!!

Blending in

So we want to make the brush stroke effects blend in with the original crystal ball. Move the light effect layers above the crystal ball layers. Then erase all the lines except a few that will blend well with the crystal ball’s shiny areas.

I don’t think the crystal ball is light enough since it’s supposed to be a glowing orb and the main source of light.

So let’s make a layer sandwich…. mmm yummy.

Create a new layer called bottom glow underneath all of your ball layers. With a 200px soft brush click right on the middle of the ball so the it looks like light coming from behind it, and change the blending mode to Hue.

Then duplicate the bottom glow layer and name it middle glow. Put it between the crystal ball layers.

Next, select the top crystal ball layer, CTRL + click the layer in the pallette, then CTRL + J to make a new layer above it called contrast glow. Fill in your selection on the contrast glow layer with black and change the blending mode to soft light.

What does it say??

Now we can add the last thing to this, text. You can use the one I used, or any other font you want. I just downloaded about 50 new fonts yesterday, so I am going to use iNked God because it has similar features as the brush strokes in this image.

Type your word, size the font a reasonable size, and position it near the crystal ball somewhere, so that it is near your focal point, but don’t make IT the focal, it just needs close to it. Copy the layer style of one of the the brush stroke layers, and paste the style on the text layer. Maybe add a subtle drop shadow style to it to make it pop out a little.

Finally, press CTRL + Alt + Shift + E to merge all the layers into one. Double click on this new flat layer, and add a 1px, inside black stroke to it. And that’s it!!

The End…

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and learned a few things too. You can download the PSD file if you want too. I plan to make a follow-up post to this soon with a larger version of this image. It would be cooler if it was larger I think.

Like I said, let me know if you have any questions, because I know some things may be a bit unclear.

If you completed this tutorial, post your result. I would love to see what you come up with.