I'm going to be giving beginners a few helpfull tips to start them off, these may or may not help you (hopefully they will =P).











Tutorials:Tutorials are a good source of help, find them, read them and follow up on them. They come in various different skill levels so they can suit both advanced and beginners. Reading tutorials can be a very good way to start off. Remember not to copy a tutorial exact (same render, colours as such), many people have done this and have been accused of ripping for getting the signatures almost exact when it isn't technically ripped.
For a good set of tutorials to begin with, look through this section.


Borders: Some signatures do look good without a border but using borders makes the image more presentable. It's a trial and error thing really. Using a Cinematic border has a better outcome but again, it's user based (trial and error).


Focal Points: Focal points are needed, they give you a certain place/area of a signature you as the creator want someone to take notice of. Not making a focal is like making just a background. It's a very simple thing to do, even finding a render and adding it onto a background is making a focal. See, it's easy to do just takes practise with the blending in.


Contrast: Always good to use some contrast, not too much making your sig look monotone. A black and white gradient map set to darken at 60% opacity is what I tend to use in some of my sigs. It gives it that little edge making signatures more presentable.


Text: Now text can be a problem, many people think that just slapping on some text and doing some effects i.e Drop shadow, outer glow, make it look good but it takes more. Someone may make a really good looking signature then ruin it by adding a rubbish layer of text. Text is a hard thing to do, it takes just as much practise as it does when practising making your main design. A good thing to do with text is to practise with filters and blending options, always good to practise as much as you can.


Lighting: Lighting is important in a signature and is easy to do if you know how and where to put it. Lighting is commonly applied by using a 100px soft brush (White) and brushed around the focal. Or you could make a new layer, apply image and use lighting tools (Dodge, Burn) to do it. Simple practise is required, same as everything else involved with GFX.


Blending in the Render: This can be difficult but soon becomes easy over time. This can be done in many ways. Some people would use a low opacity soft pixel brush and lightly erase around the render. You can also use filters and erase around, this can be aproached from many ways but takes practise.


Depth: Simple yet effective thing. Many ways this can also be done, most of which time consuming but a quick and easy way is to make a new layer, apply image and Gaussian Blur at 1-2px then erase focal points, that wayyour focal is clear and the background has a hint of blur toit creating the depth.


Unused areas: If you have blank areas in your sig, this can be very off-putting adding a sort of "Unknown Focal" point to the sig. You don't want viewers to take notice of these places rather than the supposed focal point. Clipping masks will help reduce these unused spots.




Hope these tips are helpfull.




Thanks,