Motion Blur Signature Tutorial - For Beginners

First off, this is my first tutorial so forgive me if its a bit... choppy on some topics. Anyways, before anything else, gather your resources first.

Get some good brushes first. i got mine from http://deviantart.com.

and some images or renders. http://planetrenders.net is a good place to look for clean images.

you can start with any size for your signature but let's just start with 400px x 150px and set the background to transparent as shown in the image below

Once you got this in your photoshop window, press alt+backspace to fill the background with black color (or any color of your preference)

Now brush around the background with the brushes that you picked out. Like so.

Now. Duplicate the layer by pressing CTRL+J. Click the new layer and go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and press OK. You can customize the blur that you want but lets just stick to the defaults. Afterwards, lets set the layer option of the cloned layer to Overlay. For the beginners, you can see the layer options at the Layer Window located somewhere in the lower right of your screen. After setting it to overlay, press CTRL + E to merge the two layers. The result of your image should be something like this.

Once you got your background image, lets now focus on the render or image that you want in your signature. I got this image: Venom. Resize it to your preference (for those of you who got it from planetrenders.net) by clicking on Image > Image Size. Make sure the following options are checked to get an evenly resized image.

- Scale Styles

- Constrain proportions.

Once you get your image and its size, time to place it on your signature. Place it anywhere to your preference as well. You should have something like this now.

Now duplicate the layer of your image. Repeat the blurring process. Highlight your duplicate image layer, press CTRL + F or you may want to choose another kind of blur. Either way, its up to you. Set the layer option to overlay or to your preference. You should have something like this.

Create another layer in between the image and background like so. This will serve as the color for your background. You may choose to brush around or press alt+backspace to fill up the color. Up to you. Set the layer option of your color background to overlay or softlight. Once you get your desired shade of color, you will now have something like this. Merge your background layer and the color layer by pressing CTRL + e. Make sure that your image layer is separated from the two so it doesnt get merged as well.

Now highlight your new layer and press CTRL + B to change the color balance. Then again, its all up to preference. You can play around with the different shades and tones of colors like Midtones, Shadow and Highlights. Shadow affects the dark parts, midtones affect the middle tones of the color (duh at this statement. not referring to the readers but to myself) and Highlights affect the bright parts of the color. Once you get your desired shade, you will now have something like this.

here comes the tricky part. Hightlight your image layer and choose the magnetic lasso tool and set the feather option to 20px. Refer to the image below.

Once you get the settings right, Lasso your image like so and Click the Add Layer Mask located at the bottom of the layer window. Refer to the images below

You should now have something like this in your window.

You're pretty much done with your signature but add a little bit of patterns. Create a new layer, and then CTRL+A to select the entire blank layer. You can download fill patterns from http://deviantart.com/

Go to Edit > Fill. Click contents and check Patterns. Click Custom Pattern to view other patterns. Click on the Pattern window to choose your pattern. click the little arrow on the right and then Load patterns. Load in your new patterns and press OK. I will show you how to create your own patterns in the next batch of tutorials.

Once you're done, set the layer option to overlay and Opacity to 20-30%. You should have something like this.

Add a few text, etc and voila you're done. Here is the finished product.

Hope you enjoyed my tutorial. Please leave a comment as to how I can improve my tutorials or if you want me to make another kind of tutorial. Thanks