Insane's Tutorials (Mostly GIMP)

Insane54 · Jan 4, 2008

i actually found my old tutorials i wrote like 4 years ago...their probobly not great, but they help with basic signature making in GIMP (gimp.org), which is a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

also try to remember i wrote this when i was 12, so its not really good but w/e

here goes...btw ill get more in here later...

"ok, this is pretty easy, and not exactly what u guys wanted, but ill show you a style (horribly overused tho) of making sigs called pixel stretch. your going to want to get a very good render here, with good and intresting colors, and probobly also know how to do basic GIMP, tho ill try to explain as vissually as possible

ok lets start....im gonna open GIMP and make an image 400x150...next im gonna make a solid noise. if you dont remember from the previous tutorial, that is done by going to Filter>Render>Clouds>Solid Noise, then pressing New Seed.

[img width=800 height=573]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b150/mooinsanecl/image1-1.jpg[/img]

make a new layer. put your render in it (or just Open as Layer your render). do NOT rescale it! this is important, unless its perfect size already. im gonna be using some sorta render of this guy from devil may cry...which ive never played....anyway, its big after i cut it from the background, so im not gonna scale it, im gonna hide the layer (in the layers box click the little eye by the render's layer), and duplicate it and show this one. im gonna now take my rectagular selection and take a selection of EXACTLY 150x1 pixels in an intresting color area. picture should show what i mean

im gonna copy, then make a new layer, then paste, then ill use the scale tool to stretch it across the whole image. im also gonna delete the layer i used to make this, so it doesnt show thru to the next layer

set the layer for overlay. duplicate or softlight and change upacity until it looks nice, im just going for the quick thingy...

next, duplicate your render layer and bring it to the top and make it visible. just scale it to whatever you want. i reduced his opacity to 90 for the heck of it, it also shows slightly thru him, which i like. im in a rush so i wont add any lighting effects, but those can add a world of good or bad to your sig. expirement!!!

next, on to the words. try to follow me here

i wrote Name in Matura MT Script, i think it comes on all macs. i wrote it in 35 pixels, as u can see.

next, im gonna add a bit of an effect. you can do tons of stuff to ur sig, but im gonna do a very basic (and pretty important) thing, im gonna duplicate the layer, then set both to soft light. then change the second layer to lower opactity. mine is set to 5 percent right now, but all sigs are different. do what looks best. im tired, so meh...its fine...notice how its see thru slightly

next, duplicate your render and apply a big Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) radius, enough to not be able to se any edges or details. i used 37. then put it on an angle to the render and put it behind the render layer and lower opacity (i used 60 here), so its sorta like a backglow. it should compliment the lightiung if u do it right (this takes some practice).

final step: make a new layer and select all (control+a). then do Select>Contract>1 pixel. then do Select>Inverse. Next, do Edit>Fill with FG Color and then Select>Deselect. you should now have a border. the final step is to set the border layer to softlight and you should be done. im gonna try to give my file to everyone, so you can see what i did (very sloppy tho). i did do some extra stuff (delete extra layers, name layers, merge some layers, etc). it should be available for download soon.

Final pic:

a much more advanced sig, but uses this main technique is my splinter cell premade