How to Make a "Tech" Signature

Table of Contents
Introduction
Resources
Part I: Setting up your Canvas and background
Part II: Getting your render
Part III: Making a Simple Border
Part IV: Now the Fun Part of Brushing and Enhancing your Signature!
Part V: Finishing Touches
Credits

Introduction
The purpose of this tutorial is to help you create a signature with a 'tech' feel to it. If you've watched animes like Gundam Wing, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Full Metal Panic, Zoids, etc, you'll see when the dude is in the robot and sees a whole lot of gibberish tiny lines and symbols no one understands but they're there to give a futuristic feel to it. This type of signature would probably work best with robot renders but I think (and so far have been only doing) regular renders ranging from animals to soldiers work the same depending on what you do to it. What I love about this signature is that you will always have a unique and different signature no matter what you do, even if you use the same render!

Also, if you are interested in making your render 'pop out', I will be experimenting and later forming a 'Part II tutorial' and show how you can make things pop out of your signature. I hope you enjoy and find this tutorial useful, and if you have any questions or issues PM me or just say it here in case if more people have the same issue! I do apologize for the length of this tutorial because of all the screen shots and long paragraphs but I tried to make it as simple and easy-to-follow as possible. I also apologize for how the screen shots look like because I was working on my net-book for all of this, so they may seem a little squished and tiny! However have fun, and if you can, post your results of your own signature in the end!

Resources
The following resources are used in this tutorial. You need these if you would like to create a successful signature! If you don't know how to install a brush or a font, please look up these tutorials first:
How to Install a Brush
How to Install a Font
Brushes and Fonts:
Tech Brush Set
Tech Brush Set Vol.2
Rust-n-Grunge Brush Set
AbstractTieskevo Brush Set
Stars Brush Set
01 Digitall Font
Acens Font (optional)

Part I: Setting up your Canvas and background
Step One:
Make a new document, the biggest 'appropriate'size you can have (although I've made some abnormally large ones in my more newby years) is 475W 175H. You always want the width to be more than the height.


Step Two:
Make sure that you pay attention to the colors down here. If it's white/white, press D to set it to the standard black/white.



Step Three:
Go to layer at the top, then New>Layer From Background. This will 'unlock' your background and make a layer out of it, it's just easier to do this than duplicate 2 layers and hiding the main background. You can also name your layer to keep track of what each layer has, for the sake of this tutorial name your layer either 'black' or 'white'.



Step Four:
Now go to Filter>Render>Clouds (make sure you've pressed D to reset your colors to black/white for this process to work)


Step Five:
Press Ctrl+F to keep making new clouds until you get something you like, you'll generally want more black clouds than white for this tutorial. After you have the clouds you like (it really doesn't make too big of a difference so don't spend half an hour trying to get 'perfect' clouds) go to the layers and right click on 'black' (or 'white' if you named it white) then click on duplicate layer.Name this new layer 'white' if you have black, or 'black' if you have white. You should now have 2 separate layers.



Step Six:
See the small eyeball beside the layers? Click on the eye to 'hide' the white or black layer (whatever layer is on top)


Step Seven:
On the black layer with the color black selected use the RUST N GRUNGE brushes only (to avoid confusion before you load all downloaded brush sets, make sure you only load the rust n grunge set and scroll down). Just brush wherever you feel like, you might have to click 2-3 times for the paint to look more clearer and detailed.


Step Eight:
Click on the eye again to show the white layer. Do the same brushing on the 'white' layer with the white color. When you're satisfied with what you have, above the white layer will be some more settings in a drop menu. Click on this drop menu and click on 'overlay'. You may want to do this setting before you start brushing so you know where the black brush is.



Part II: Getting your render
Step Nine:
Find your render or stock image and erase the background around the main 'character'. It doesn't matter if there's a small 'border' around your character but try to erase as much as you can without touching the character. It's easier to just google whatever you want like 'halo renders' and search it up in the images. The render should be saved in .PNG format and you can just drag the render on your canvas.
However, before you drag and drop, you'll have to test if the size is just right for canvas. To make your image smaller without having distorted proportions, go to file>automate>fit image. Set the pixels you'd want, try to make your render slightly bigger than the canvas proportions.


Step Ten:
Drag the render to your canvas tab to open the tab and then drop the render on your canvas. You can fix up the image again by moving it around to wherever you want it to be. The render will make its own separate layer, you can rename it if you like as well.


Step Eleven:
To help the render blend a little better with the canvas, press Ctrl+U to bring up the hue/saturation. Change the saturation -50 and press OK.

Step Twelve:
Right click on the render layer and go into Blending Options. Check off Drop Shadow and press OK.



Step Thirteen:
On the left hand side or wherever you set the 'main' user bar, find the Lasso Tool. You can carelessly go around your render (I messed up here and had to re-do it but didn't take new sshots you'll see why). Go around your render and after your done, right click and click on Feather. Feather it to about 15-20 pixels. The line will become more smoother around your render the higher the feather pixel rate is. After you're done, look at the bottom of the layer window and look for a 'camera-like' button and click on it to add layer mask. This will make a 'fading' effect around your render. If you want more fading or there's too much, undo everything and use the lasso tool again or just change the feather pixel rate.






Part III: Making a Simple Border
Step Fourteen:
This will be quite confusing so try to stay with me here. Duplicate the 'white' layer 3 times and move the layers to the top. Rename the layers 3pxstroke, 2pxstrokered, 1pxstroke. To add the stroke effect right click the layers and go into Blending Options and go to the bottom setting 'Stroke' Make sure all of it is INSIDE not outside or center, and change the 3px layer to 3 pixel stroke and leave it black. The 2ndpx layer will have 2 pixels and the color red. The remaining 1px layer will have a stroke of 1 pixel and change it back to black.


Step Fifteen:
Find the Magic Wand Tool and select the 2pxstrokered layer. Carefully click in between the border to highlight the red part of the border, and press delete. Right click and press deselect.



Step Sixteen:
I can't even remember what I do here so just try and experiment until you get the same result for the border lol. Open blending options for the 3pxstroke layer and change the stroke to 1 px. Do the same for the other layers. You should be able to have the border in the end even after hiding the 2 'stroke' layers so you can either keep them hidden just in case and put them at the bottom of all layers, or just delete them to get it out the way.




Step Seventeen:
To make sure you have the same color you did before you made the border (erasing didn't work for me), go into the drop menu settings and set the stroke/border layer to darker color. You SHOULD have the same colors you had before, but still keep the border the way it is.


Step Eighteen:
I renamed my stroke layer to border just to keep it organized and moved my hidden layers to the bottom. What's next is making a new layer, name it 'stars'.


Part IV: Now the Fun Part of Brushing and Enhancing your Signature!
Step Nineteen:
Next take out your 'star' brushes. To make it easier on yourself, check off scattering and set what you want. Make sure you have them spaced out too and increase the count if you wish. You click once, you get 2 stars instead of 1. I kept it to 2 stars to keep it more controlled but you can do whatever suits you.
Use the star brushes (white color or even black if you like) on the stars layer. If it doesn't seem to be working out and making any clear stars, just go to the 'black' layer and paint on there instead, it'll give you the same result in the end. For me, I used both the stars layer and the black layer.



Step Twenty:
Next is the most fun part. Create multiple layers but I only made two, 'tech white' (for the white colored tech brushes) and tech black. You may use the black layer again but I recommend just keeping it simple with 2 layers, or even one if you only want 1 white tech layer.


Part V: Finishing Touches
Step Twenty-One:
After you [think] you're done with the tech layer(s), go to layer>New Adjustment Layer>Color Balance. You want to have this on top of all layers (but below the border layer) so that all layers will have the colors you set.
A color balance table will pop up, make sure you experiment with all 3 tones (shadows, midtones, highlights). This takes quite a bit of experimenting especially if you mix all sorts of color mixtures instead of one set color, so have fun with this!





Step Twenty-Two:
After you're done with your colors, this step is completely optional. You can go to Images>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast and screw with those two to either make your siggy sharper, blurry, brighter, or darker.


Step Twenty-Three:
Text! Remember the Acens and 01 Digitall fonts you downloaded? You can now use them here! Press the 'T' button on your user bar (usually found near the bottom) and choose the font, size, colors, and more! To enhance your text even more, right click on the layer and go into blending options, and just experiment to see what you like there. You can even brush on top of the layer, in which it asks you if you'd like to raterize the layer. I don't recommend too much brushing though because it can make the text looking too congested and complicated in the end.


Step Twenty-Four:
FINISHING TOUCHES! You'll probably still add or try to remove more in the end, or screw with the settings and filters some more (which is good, screwing around always helps you learn more and faster!). I added some more tech brushes here on the duck render.


Step Twenty-Five:
ADMIRE and SHOW OFF your work! Great job, this signature takes a long time to make but always produces unique and different results no matter what you do!

Credits
Thanks to way too many tutorials I've used in the past and have now incorporated them all in this one piece! Thanks to all the users that help teach me through comments and criticisms as well! You guys rock!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial !

Other results:
I made these 2 for another clan I am in for the game warcraft 3 (if anyone is familiar with it at all lol that's my main game >.<)

Wow thats really Nice


I too play warcraft