Two Graphics Questions

I have to graphics questions. Okay see here

See how the joker his head is outside of the sig. How do you do that in photoshop? Its overlayed on top but what do you do in order to do that. Anyone?

Second is

How do you make that cool blue lined shape thing in the sig? That looks sweet! Can anyone help me?

noimus wrote: See how the joker his head is outside of the sig. How do you do that in photoshop? Its overlayed on top but what do you do in order to do that. Anyone?

you would probably want to use layers, and to make the head stick out above the rest like that you need a transparancy layer underneath.

In order to make my sig I…

1. Made a new blank file, 500x100 (or 100x500, I can never remember)
2. Made the little background part
3. Saved it as background.png
4. Made another new blank file, 520x150 and pasted background.png into it
5. Got the render and positioned it so it looked neat. (I use planetrenders.net for my renders because they have tons of them)

That's it. I'm sure you can get him 'outside' by just starting with a bigger canvas or making the original rectangle smaller. I know my way is harder than usual (just put him on a new layer), but I messed with shadows and stuff and I'm not really sure what I was doing. I'm still a novice in the whole graphics department.

Oh, this was actually made in GIMP, not Photoshop, but I'm sure my 'technique' (if you can call it that) would work either way.

oh okay thanks but what about the one that lemur made. that cool blue line

by the way what do you do to make a transparency layer?

Okay to get something that's not on a background like that, you simply don't have a background behind it.

In GIMP/Photoshop you will see those little grey and white (I think they're that colour, I don't have either on this computer so I can't check) checked boxes. This means that area is transparant. The easiest way to make an image transparant is to delete the background layer before you start making stuff on it.

To get the effect of a little bit sticking out you just have something that looks like it is supposed to be a full image background and then something that slightly goes over it. Futility's sig is a very good example of this.

Now one important thing about transparancy is.. it cannot be jpeg or bmp etc… It **has **to be PNG or GIF.

Your second question… On Fuser's sig, the black border-type-thing, which has the blue line on it, will be a seperate layer. Then, I beleive, Fuser used Layer Styles in Photoshop (In CS3 you just double click the layer to open this) which has something that does that. Alternatively, in GIMP.. you can select the area inside the black border-type-thing (which is still going to be on a seperate layer) and use the Stroke Selection function. I cannot remember 100%, and as I said I don't have GIMP or Photoshop here, but it should be in the edit toolbar. If not, just look around the toolbars, it is in one of them.

I know I type a lot in chunks there, but that should deffinately help you a lot. If you have any further questions just ask me, either in this thread or via PM.

noimus wrote: by the way what do you do to make a transparency layer? i dont know about photoshop, but in GIMP you go to layers>transparency>add alpha channel, and that will add a transparent layer, so if you can just erase all the stuff you want to be transparent. and like someone else said, you'll have to save it as a png of gif (and i believe tiff supports transparency too)

Good job explaining reaper!

reaper4334 wrote: Now one important thing about transparancy is.. it cannot be jpeg or bmp etc… It **has **to be PNG or GIF.

But GIF should only be used if you are making an animated signature, otherwise the quality is so bad it isnt worth it. PNG should be used in most cases because it can handle transparency and it has better quality.