Welcome

So you want to make Signatures and Avatars ? Well in this thread i will give you all the information you need to know !!

So lets get a few simple questions out of the way first ::

A Sig is usually a digital piece of art placed in a forum under a person's post.

Exp: Link

An Avatar is a smaller version of the signature that goes underneath your name, But on h3f there are certain limits such as, 100x100 Px Max and 19 Kb size limit.

Exp: Link

Usually people use photoshop but in other circumstances you could compromise for gimp.

Photoshop CS2.

The difference between gimp and photoshop is the amount of feature's on photoshop is greater and photoshop is more user friendly although PS costs money and gimp is free.

Gimp - Link

Photoshop - Link

That is the 30 day free trial of photoshop since the full program costs money you can either buy it for around $400 or you can get it cracked for free.

Now you want to familurize with the program you have chosen, Here is a HUGE guide to getting to grips with photoshop:

LINK

And here is a guide to Gimp:

LINK

cnc stands for comments and critism, its how you rate others sigs/works of art, instead of just saying " oh man that looks good " you want to tell them how to improve the sig, what you like about it, what you dont like about it, what you would of done different etc...

Heres a tut courtesy of Kilo...



You need open a document, to open a document either go to file > new ( to create a new document ) or file > open to open an existing picture.

Note: when you open up a blank document you want to make sure the size type is on Pixels aka Px because thats what most people measure things in PS with, if you open up a document and it is laggy then it is most likely too big and photoshop is having trouble using it because of its size so thats why i recommend having the file sizes on Px.

Resources are things you use within either photoshop or gimp to add to your image, either it be patterns and textures to fonts and brushes.

Here are places to get them at:

Brushes:

DeviantArt

GameRenders

Paperlilies

PS Brushes

Fonts:

Da Font

1001 Free Fonts

Deviant Art

Simply The Best

Mikes SketchPad

Note: to install fonts - Start > Control Panel > Appearance, and then in the top left corner click fonts and then go to file > install new fonts and choose the correct location of the font you have downloaded.

Pattern's

Deviant Art

Free Patterns

C4D's

Deviant Art

Planet Renders

Game Renders

Note: to install patterns, brushes and textures you take it out of its winrar folder if it is in one and the go to My computer > C:\ Adobe > Adobe Photoshop Cs2 > Presets > ( What ever you are installing ) and then jus drag and drop it in the correct folder.

a C4D is a image made in the program Cinema 4D and can be added to your sig/image to have nice effects.

Exp:

And Exp of one used in a sig:



Filters are an action you choose which adds various effects to your image for example a blur. ( Expermiment with them to see what you can do )

No worries you can always undo around 10 of your previous actions by going to Edit > undo. ( as many times as necessary )

Let Vamphunter explain:




A render is a cut-out of a picture that you place in to a sig.

Exp:



Places to get Renders: - LINK

First you have your screen on the place you want to take the picture and then press " Print screen " loacted at the top right corner of your keyboard (above insert) and the open up Microsoft paint and go to edit > paste. Then your picture will appear and you then want to go to file > save as and save it as PNG format (for best quality) and then open it in photoshop. Once open in photoshop make a new document ( the sig size you want ) and have the desktop selected and press " Ctrl + A " and then go to edit > copy. Select your blank sig and press " Ctrl V " and then jus move it in to the required position.

Note: you might want to resize it before copy/pasting.

GIF: used for animation and its great compression methods while still keeping decent quality.

PNG: is mostly used for sigs that are not square shaped so the corners do not appear visible in web browsers.

Note: if your using Internet explorer the sig will still appear square but will have a very light blue-ish colour were the corners should have been.

JPEG: Expanation.

PSD: is used for saving the layers of your work in photoshop so if you close it or want to continue at a later date its still fully editable.

The rest you dont really need to know about at this time.

Many people make them their selfs but you can jus download this Scanline pack - LINK

How To Install: Save it to your desktop > start > my computer > Local disk C:\ > program files > adobe > adobe photoshop cs2 > presets > patterns

And then either drag and srop in to there or copy/paste.

Once that is done you can either go to blending options > patterns on the desired layer or use the Fill tool and at the top change it from Foreground colour to Pattern.

Note you will most likely have to load the patterns before there their the first time, to do this click this arrow and go to load patterns like shown HERE



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Alright im done for now i may update this every so often, i hope you learned alot from this guide and i look forward to seeing your outcomes.

Thanx to everyone's tuts, sigs and avatars i used as examples, i made this in an attempt to bring more people to the GFX section and not let it " die " out as people say.

-Shy

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