Help with banners...

[Tygleris]

Re: Help with banners...

O.o Damn, that's what I was afraid of. Could you list the versions that can use the brush tools like in those tutorials and such? I might be able to 'find' some other version of it, so knowing what to look for would help. I may be able to get my hands on CS too without having to pay too much.

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

EDIT: Times up.

[Tygleris]

Re: Help with banners...

Thanks. Now maybe you can enlighten me a bit. What exactly are these brushes? Just backgrounds? Because I've seen brush about 50 times and I'm starting to think there is more than one meaning to it. I thought it all meant a brush tool, but now I'm starting to think the backgrounds mean the same thing >.>

Again, I might be able to get 7 or CS, so I might be able to do all that fun stuff soon anyways.

And thanks for all the effort put into helping me. Sorry all the confusion ended up with me just being sad about my PS version, but I appreciate the effort.

Double Post Edited:


Another attempt.

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

yeah, the problem is, those brushes I found are not "fitting" for FFXI sig making. If u want, I can make u a sig temporarly until u get Photoshop 7.0

Also, just a quick tip. Try not to use the invert effect or the glowing edges effect on ur render; filter effects are for backgrounds only. And I forgot to tell u the basics of text making. >.<

Double Post Edited:
Text Tutorial

1.Grab a background (I'll use this one). select white for ur foreground




2. Make sure u selected white. Now go to the font option and click on any part of the sig where u want to place the text click on it and type whatever u want. Mine looks like this (used 911 Porscha)



3. Now its pretty obvious it looks way bad and the font doesn't stand out. So right click on teh font layer (on ur layer window) and click on blending options

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

continued

4. Now click on the stroke option and apply this setting.


5. Now the font stands out a bit more. Now leave the blending option and apply the soft light blending effect. After that duplicate the font layer. click on the stroke option (it should be visible below the font layer) to cancel the stroke effect. Now set ur mode to "normal" and change the opacity to 50%. This is what I got.



6. Add a render of whatever u like. My final result.

[Amadaun]

Re: Help with banners...

Okay, need a few more pieces of advice. One... when I select the odd color background and go to delete it, it just fills it with my background color. I want it completeley gone, showing off the grey checkered boxes showing that there is nothing there.

Also, I'm using photoshop, and I wanna know is there a way to be able to change the size of something without having to enter the height/width? Like be able to grab the corner and stretch it manually.

Edit: There, a second attempt is up. Comments/criticism please.

This is probably a little late for any answers, but here are a few anyway. ^^

I think your problem with the backgrounds is that you opened a new canvas with that color set as your background. When you go to open a new canvas, a box should pop up with a bunch of options like size and resolution. At the very bottom of that, there's a section labeled "Contents." Make sure that the last of the three options, "Transparent", is selected. That (I hope) should fix it.

And as to changing the size of something... If you're changing the size of the canvas or resizing the entire image, as far as I know, you have to input your height/width. On the other hand, if you're just changing the size of one of the layers, you can go to Edit > Transform > Scale, which will give you a click and drag box.

Also, here's a super-short tutorial for adding brushes into Photoshop if you find any:

http://www.photoshop.brushes.btinter...dbrushes.shtml

Don't get discouraged with using 6.0. It's the version I use, and once you get used to it, you can get some fairly decent stuff out of it. Granted, I use it mostly for painting and only recently branched out into effects, so I'm still learning, myself. ^^

[Tygleris]

Re: Help with banners...

Should be getting 7.0 tonight ^_^

Double Post Edited:
Okay. 7.0: Check.

Now if someone would be so kind as to tell me how to use brushes with 7.0...

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

use or load? If u need to know how to load brushes, check Amadaun's link. If u want to use it, well just start clicking on the background with ur brushes (and don't drag).

[Tygleris]

Re: Help with banners...

Gracias. And just one last thing. What brushes did you use to make 1.) The awesome red dante-like sig for your website, and 2.) The black and white > earth colors one you showed me for the tutorial?

And I'm having one particular problem. Whenever people have mentioned do something to a layer, duplicate it then do something then merge the layers... that never seems to work for me.

What layer should I be editing? The one on top or on bottom, and when I do this, all I can see is the layer on top... what should I do. I'm probably just missing some little step like setting an option.

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

The brush I used for the tut can be found in that link to deviantart. And the reason why ppl tell u to create different layers is for two reasons.
1. u get a cool effect by selecting different blending options.
2. Its easier to modify parts of ur work if its in different layers (less risk of screwing up ur entire work)

Sig tutorial 1 (making grunge sig)

1. Open a 425X 110 document (RGB color)



2. use the brush found in #3 of my previous tut and start clicking on it until u get this effect. Be sure u use different combinations of brushes than using the same brush over and over.



3. Now click on new layer.

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

continued

4. And start clicking away again this is what it looks like now



5. Now u should notice that the only layer u see is the top one (u mentioned it earlier). Now here is what u do. go to the blending options here.


U notice the default is normal? Now, I changed it to hardlight (u can try other blending modes).

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

Final

6. Now repeat steps 3-5 till u get a background u like. Time to add color

7. Go to the color balance option found here.

move the bars around till u get a nice color. I recommend either dark blue, dark red, or orange for grunge sigs. (I used brown)



8. Now heres something extra. U don't need to do this but learning this helps. If u want to make the background muti-color, go to Filter-->render-->clouds WITH UR COLOR BALANCE LAYER STILL SELECTED. Now repeat step7 and choose a different color. Apply the cloud effect again, the sig should look muti-colored



9. Apply text (text blending tut can be found above) and ur render and u got urself a sig.

Sry if this isn't so clear, its just that theres a 3pic limit to each post so I had to cut down some detail. >.<

One more thing. U might consider this a good sig, but in fact, THIS IS JUST THE BASICS. Its important that u try experimenting regardless of how it looks at the beginning. Keep trying and u'll get better.


EDIT: show me what u got, and I'll give u more tips.

Double EDIT: thnx to Amadaun for clarifying some things I missed. ^^

[Tygleris]

Re: Help with banners...

I'm just wondering what brush that is specifically. He has a lot of them there, and I'm probably going to end up downloading them all, but it's hard to tell what is what.

Here are a few. Same thing just with different color and blending.

[Kagerou]

Re: Help with banners...

very nice for first try. Don't use really intense colors though. Heres a awesome tutorial site I used back when I was still a newbie.

www.pixel2life.com

If theres anything u need, PM me.

[Tygleris]

Re: Help with banners...

Here's my second attempt at making a decent background, and I even added a few things to show how it would look if I tried making an actual banner out of it.