Today i will be showing how to make my most recent signature, Which teaches some smudge techniques as well as lighting
So to start off you need the render:
Now make a new document of this size: 400x150
Next add the render to the canvas, resize, and duplicate it 2 times.
Now hide one and what were going to do next is make a basic background to work with.
Do this by using the eyedropper tool to pick one of the dark teals on the render,
then on your background layer fill the canvas with it, after that make a new layer
and use a radial gradient starting from the middle just to were the edge is to give it
a nice tone.
Continuing on, pick a dark green from the render with the dropper tool and then hide the render,
now were the render was brush some of the dark green on with a hard brush just enough stick out from behind were it
was,
Then go to filter>distort>ripple use the default settings.
Time to switch to the smudge tool, use these settings:
(its an animation showing all the settings, be patient)
Next smudge the edges of the ripples (were it would be sticking out), brushing in a diagnal motion (going the same
direction as the render).
You should have something similar to this:
Now re-show both render layers and set the top one to "overlay"
Next we will be creating the smudging shown on each side of the render,
start of by using the same dark green and brushing a little on each side of the render.
Now go to ripple that once or twice and smudge the same way as the BG smudge.
Then repeat on another layer with the lighter green.
Now that all our smudging is in place we can move on to lighting.
Create a new layer above all and make a small white radial gradient (white to transparent) and erase the parts that
don't follow the flow of the render.
Set that layer to softlight at 80% opacity then duplicate it and set it to normal at about 20%.
Next create 2 new blank layers above the lighting, use the marqee tool to select the whole canvas, then while still
on one of the blank layers go to edit>stroke and use black at 5px, now cut it so just these parts are showing:
Now on the other blank layer we created make another stroke but at 2px.
Looks pretty good eh?
Im not going to go into the text I created for mine as its a custom font made by me, and its time consuming to recreate.
Also if its not sharp enough, make a blank layer and then hide the lighting layers as well as the borders and go to
image> apply image. Then navigate to filter>sharpen>unsharp mask then apply on default settings.
you an now reshow your borders/lighting.
The PSD for this tutorial will be available when I make a new signature as I don't want it to be floating around while im using it, it would be weird.
