A Tutorial: Web 2.0 Style Glossy Signatures

I'll probably expand on this a bit later. Maybe add screenshots and stuff. Anyway, this is how to make a signature like mine in MS Word. That's right! You don't even need to deal with Photoshop. It's not even that difficult. The key word here is GRADIENTS.

Step 1: Choose a Shape.

This depends on what you're trying to accomplish. For signatures, I like either boxes or rounded boxes. (My sig is a rounded box with the corners brought all the way in.) Go to the drawing toolbar in Word and select your shape. I chose a rounded box. Next, right click the shape and format its color to whatever you'd like (I chose orange here) and change the line color to "no line." Also, change the layout to "in front of text." As a matter of fact, do that with every object you use from now on in this little tutorial.

[img width=650]http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/5161/tut1ey2.jpg[/img]​

Step 2: Say Your Piece

Now you'll want to add some sort of text, maybe. If you don't, then skip this step. Anyway, insert some word are into your document. To do some of the cooler effects, you'll need multiple pieces of word art. (My sig uses 4: "C", "R", "osmic", and "ick")

Change the color, lines, font, etc. to your liking. I prefer to have no lines and for the text to contrast nicely with the background.

Now place the wordart wherever you want to. You can hold CTRL and use the arrow-keys to do pixel-by-pixel adjustments.

[img width=650]http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/2059/tut2fk7.jpg[/img]​

Step 3: Pictures, anyone?

Most people like to have a picture in their sig. Grab your favorite Halo screenshot or a random picture (maybe seagulls?) from the internet. Copy it into your word document. Crop it to the correct size and height-width ratio. Resize it so it fits in your sig box somewhere. Make sure it looks good, and go onto the next step.

[img width=650]http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/8928/tut3oi1.jpg[/img]​

Step 4: Gradient-ize

This is the key to making your new sig look pretty. We'll deal with the picture firts. You may notice the sharp, obnoxious edges on your picture. We want to get rid of those. Create an autoshape in the same shape and size as your picture (probably a rectangle) and place it directly over the pic. Now go into the autoshape options and change the lines to "no lines" and go into the "fill effects" option dialogue. Select "Two Colors." Now, select the "From center" option. Make both colors the same color as your background color. Finally, set the transparencies to go from 100% to 0%. (You can play with these numbers a bit, but that's the easiest way to go for most pictures.) Voila, the picture is now smoothed down to the background.

Now for the glassy sheen. To do this, create an autoshape in the same shape as your background. Make it the same width, but about half the height of the background box. Set the line color to "no line." Select the fill effects option, two color it, and make both of those colors white. Now make the transparencies go from something like 80% to something like 95%. And there you have it. You may need to play with the transparencies, depending on the orientation you select, the color of your background, and your preferences.

[img width=650]http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/8210/tut4ep0.jpg[/img]​

Step 5: Tweakage

Finally, i like to add a little bit more. Make a very thin, very long ellipse. Make it mostly transparent, and set the outer fill-effect transparency to 100%. This will add a nice little flare that you can put along the top and bottom edges of your new sig.

[img width=650]http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/8284/tut5sk4.jpg[/img]​

Step 6: Resizing and Upload

And finally, finally, you should make sure you can get your sig into FH or whatever other forum you want. So, copy (a simple screenshot will do) your new signature from MSWord into your favorite image editor. I use IRFANVIEW, 'cause it's simple. Resample the image down to whatever size you want. You'll want to preserve the aspect ratio and set just the width, probably. Save it as a jpg. Next go to an image hosting website (I use imageshack.us) and upload your picture. Finally, add the sig to your signature with [*img] tags. Note, if you skip this last step and just resize it with the 'width=' context, it'll look jagged, like my pics above.

​

And that's it.

 

Re: Web 2.0 Style Gleaming Signatures: A How-To

Yeah... I have photoshop, but I have to shut down EVERY other program running in the background to make it run without crashing my laptop 5 minutes in. I make do. Lol. Oh, and I have pictures for each step here, I just have to finish my current forge map before I post them... Priorities.

 

Re: Web 2.0 Style Gleaming Signatures: A How-To

Hmm... I seem to have lost the word document I was going to take pictures from... I'll commence the hunt.

 

Re: Web 2.0 Style Gleaming Signatures: A How-To

OK, the pics have been found and are up.

And a final step has been added.

I see white lime already put this to work. Nice job, though you may want to go over those jagged corners a bit. I'd move the pic away from the edge so you don't have the gradient sticking out. Or, alternatively, you can make curve autoshapes that are all white and put them over the corners to hide them. Also, the gradients don't look quite as good in your sig. It's probably due to the image type you saved it as. Or it could be that MSWord 03 doesn't do them as well as 07. I'm not sure.

EDIT:

Nope, figured it out. You used white and black for the gradient covering the picture. You have to make it black and black and then have the transparency go from 0 (at the center) to 100 (the edges). Hope that helps.

 

Oh... You're just using a pic with a white background. You might want to set the background color to transparent on the lime pic. But that sometimes doesn't work real well in word. Also, where's your overall shine gradient (last part of step 4)? That's what makes these look good. The sig looks much better now, though.