I'm still almost clueless on how to create a signature. I recently joined Miraj's site and I downloaded his stock pack and used a tutorial of his to make this. I was really confused when doing a lot of the things in this, had no idea how to certain things, and hopefully you consider that this is my first signature, ignoring one other signature I've made with just paintbrushes. EDIT #1
Low quality, the focal needs to be defined properly. Light source is very important to a signature, for it adds a bit realism gives a little 3D look. I would recommend you to keep the borders completely black solid. As far as using my smudging tutorial goes, I may be able to help you with setting you smudge brush to the correct settings.
Basic signature Tutorial part1 by ~dachivale on deviantART Basic signature tut part2 by ~dachivale on deviantART This is a pretty basic tutorial, it goes fairly in depth and doesn't worry bout lighting and whatnot too much. On the Topic, the sig shall I say, beginner-y? The smuding is decent, I would reccomend a single color for the broder. Also, a small focal isn't good, specialy for beginners.
Did you use multiple layers? It looks like you just used one and smudged it a bit. Layers are key. Also, you always want your focal to be sharp. To that effect, I suggest using the High Pass Filter to sharpen (Filter menu > Other > High Pass). The way to use it effectively is to make a new layer then go to Image > Apply Image > Hit OK. Then make sure that layer you just made is selected and do the Filter > Other > High Pass. Set the High Pass slider so that your picture is mostly grey (more color = less sharp) but you can still see some of the details. Hit OK and then set the blending mode of your layer to something like Hard Light. Then, use an eraser tool and erase all that you don't want to be sharp. You'll have to play around with it so that everything looks good, but this is the best method of sharpening in my opinion.
I've taken all of these suggestions into consideration, yet it's going to take me a bit, to actually put the suggestions into perspective, since I have no clue what some things mean, mostly due to the fact I have no clue what some of the directions were in the tutorial. Yeah, Whisper I used 17 layers but for some reason I didn't use like 9 of them. The tutorial asked for that many layers, yet I didn't do anything with them. When adding the Gaussian Blur, the Gradient Map, and the border, these things got me really confused as to how it went from looking okay to bad. They totally changed the signature and I got sidetracked on how to actually get it to look the way it's supposed to look. In my opinion I need to learn a lot more about signatures first, create several more signature on an easier scale, and then come back to this when I have a better knowledge of sig making.
Did you erase any of the Gaussian Blur? Because it looks like you just put it on and left it all. You were probably supposed to erase the part of it that's over the focal. Anyway, I think maybe watching a video tutorial would be helpful. Try to find one of those.
I did what you said in your previous post Whispy and tried to do some of the other things mentioned in this thread... but about G blur... I did this thing, I don't remember what it was called but it transferred all the settings and changes I've made to all the similar layers, so now I don't exactly know how to remove it. Here's an updated version though...