Custom Made Sig and Avatar [7]

Darkelk said:

I know this is an odd request, but I'd love you forever if you made me a nice signature with an elk on it.
Prefferably a dark theme haha.

I'll draw you one too. :)

:)))))))

JaidynM said:

To all GFX Team members.

I got the Photoshop trial today, as I'm doing Visual Media for school. I then thought, why don't I start using it for making sigs/avatars etc? My question to you is, how did you start learning to use Photoshop? Also, do you recommend Photoshop or any other software? Did you use tutorials or just have a play around with it to get the feel of it?

Well Athene has exceptionally covered all of this, but I thought I might as well throw my opinion in there.

When I first started using Photoshop I had absolutely no idea what I was doing! I hadn't bought the program at this stage, this was at school. I began by simply fiddling around a bit and familiarising myself with the interface. I spent quite a long time doing this, especially with all of the filters. What I would recommend is that you open up and old photo of yours in Photoshop, then click Filters > Filter Gallery. This will bring up a window where you can see what all of the filters do in just a few clicks. To be honest I don't use these as much as I should, but they're good to know. Then move onto the rest of the filters which can be found under Filters (surprise surprise ) These are much more useful when sigging, the blurs for example are brilliant. Play with them until you get bored - it'll be a surprisingly long time! Another great one is the liquify tool, Filters > Liquify, it's great for fire and water effects.

Once you're more confident with those, I would move onto the left side panel. Here's a great photo I've just found that shows all of the tools it contains:



Right click on the icon to show the other tools in that category. There's a lot to learn there!

Then there's all of the panels on the right to learn, the layers is the easiest to start off with:



Then there's the adjustments panel to learn, hover over the icons to see what they do. They're easy enough to work out:



The keyboard shortcuts make things a lot faster: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Keyboard Shortcuts

Then you're all set to hit the tutorials:

50 Stunning Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials - Smashing Magazine
30 Beautiful Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web
140+ High Quality Categorized Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials - tripwire magazine
65+ Smoking Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials | Tutorials | instantShift
22 Best Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
100 Creative Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials | designrfix.com
50 Creative Photoshop Text Effects | Psdtuts+

Brushes: Google

Textures: Google

Patterns: Google

Fonts: dafont.com

And last of all, have fun!

Excellent post, Tom !! A most valuable post for a photoshop beginner I can imagine. It is a resource!

tom982 said:

JaidynM said:

To all GFX Team members.

I got the Photoshop trial today, as I'm doing Visual Media for school. I then thought, why don't I start using it for making sigs/avatars etc? My question to you is, how did you start learning to use Photoshop? Also, do you recommend Photoshop or any other software? Did you use tutorials or just have a play around with it to get the feel of it?

Well Athene has exceptionally covered all of this, but I thought I might as well throw my opinion in there.

When I first started using Photoshop I had absolutely no idea what I was doing! I hadn't bought the program at this stage, this was at school. I began by simply fiddling around a bit and familiarising myself with the interface. I spent quite a long time doing this, especially with all of the filters. What I would recommend is that you open up and old photo of yours in Photoshop, then click Filters > Filter Gallery. This will bring up a window where you can see what all of the filters do in just a few clicks. To be honest I don't use these as much as I should, but they're good to know. Then move onto the rest of the filters which can be found under Filters (surprise surprise ) These are much more useful when sigging, the blurs for example are brilliant. Play with them until you get bored - it'll be a surprisingly long time! Another great one is the liquify tool, Filters > Liquify, it's great for fire and water effects.

Once you're more confident with those, I would move onto the left side panel. Here's a great photo I've just found that shows all of the tools it contains:



Right click on the icon to show the other tools in that category. There's a lot to learn there!

Then there's all of the panels on the right to learn, the layers is the easiest to start off with:



Then there's the adjustments panel to learn, hover over the icons to see what they do. They're easy enough to work out:



The keyboard shortcuts make things a lot faster: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Keyboard Shortcuts

Then you're all set to hit the tutorials:

50 Stunning Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials - Smashing Magazine
30 Beautiful Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web
140+ High Quality Categorized Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials - tripwire magazine
65+ Smoking Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials | Tutorials | instantShift
22 Best Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
100 Creative Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials | designrfix.com
50 Creative Photoshop Text Effects | Psdtuts+

Brushes: Google

Textures: Google

Patterns: Google

Fonts: dafont.com

And last of all, have fun!

Outstanding post.....rep added!
(nice to be able to rep someone without being told to spread it around)

Thanks for the rep and the kind words guys :)

Athene said:

Hi Darkelk, here you go

Very nice!

Athene said:

Hi Darkelk, here you go

Very nice Athene! I'm sure he'll love it. What's that font? It looks great :)

Darkelk said:

:)))))))

Here's my effort, look bad compared to the competition
Large
Attachment 179813

For applying

Attachment 179814