How to create your own Signature

Hello there! I'm back (once again!!). This time, with How to create your own Signature, this is a really cool trick, which took me some hours write it down, but I think that's GREAT!!! Just so you know... this post is dedicated to my dear Meryl for her question about 'how adding some signature for a picture'.

Like I said before, PSD Holic will show you doods a quick and easy way to convert your signature into a really cool vector Photoshop Custom Shape. D'ya guys remember about How to install and manage brushes and other presets? This technique also works nicely for converting line drawings or even comic illustration as well.

Surely... It makes a little assumption that you doods have at least a working knowledge of using the Pen tool (P) to manipulate Paths. Also, if you’re planning to play along at home, so... you’ll need to be able to scan your best damn signature (or take a photo of it) and bring it down into Photoshop application.


Well, NO MORE WORDS... LET'S DO IT!


The first step in this process is of course to get your own signature from the paper into Photoshop. The funny thing is.. here I use a red stabillo to make mine, d'ya hve any idea bout it?!?!? lmao!!!





Duplicate your blurry signature layer by simply pressing Ctrl + J. Lets call up the Levels dialog and increase the contrast between the black and white areas of this image. Press Ctrl + L to bring the Levels dialog up and grab the black point slider at the bottom left of the beautiful histogram and drag it to the right until sufficient contrast has been achieved.

See this gorgeous image below, lol, and change the blend mode of your signature copy layer to Multiply, the dark part becomes more darker with this kinda process.






We’ve got a good dark signature now, we need to convert the writing to a selection. Now you could try to select it with the Magic Wand Tool (W), or by selecting a color range, but... I’ve got a much better... and damn... more accurate to do this with black and white documents. Merge this two Layers (Layer1 and Layer2).

Lets switch over to the Channels palette. See the image on left! Hold Ctrl + Click anywhere on the blue area, this act will make a selection just in about the dark area of your signature... Done?!?! Once the selection is made... Reswitch to Layer section again! Go ahead doods... lol.

See image below... the difference is the marching ants looks like.. lol. If you have done switching back to the Layers palette.. you will get the 1st left image right?!?!? Inverse the selection by pressing the Shift + Ctrl + I. Look the difference after you did it.




Brilliant!!! Now select the Marquee tool by pressing the M key, then Right + Click anywhere along the "marching ants" of the selection on the stage and choose. Make Work Path from the menu that comes up.






The hidden Tolerance dialog box will then appear ask you how many pixels you wish to use as tolerance for your awesome path, in other words, how exactly the path should follow this brilliant selection. I find that a tolerance of 2-3 pixels usually renders a result that doesn’t require a ton of tweaking after the conversion. Click OK to turn the selection we just created into a particular Path that we can now easily manipulate and then simply convert to our Custom Shape.








Now it’s time to work with our path.


... but before we through it, ... this step is ...

OPTIONAL

Still remember with this How to Install and Manage Brushes and Other Presets??? Yupp.. This step is about to save your signature into Brush preset.. you can leave this if you've got your intension on How to Install and Manage Brushes and Other Presets.

After you got your Work Path on your signature (see the steps before), you can get more solid signature color by Right Clicking the active Path then choosing Fill Path. Fill it with your own desired color.

OK, back to our job here... lmao! Once you’ve gotten your paths modified to your liking and with either the Pen tool, Direct Selection tool or Path Selection Tool active, Ctrl + Click anywhere along the path and choose Define Custom Shape from the menu that appears.





Your sweet custom shape has now been saved and will automatically appear at the bottom of the Custom Shape picker, but let's go one step further and save this signature as a Custom Shape Set for safe keeping, because if you were to select Reset Shapes from the Custom Shapes menu right now you’d loose all your brilliant but hard work as well, lmao.





Enter to your main menu, choose Edit > Preset Manager. When the Preset Manager appears, choose Custom Shapes from the drop-down menu at the top of the box, then navigate to the end of the thumbnail samples to find the shape you just created (**new shapes are always added to the end of the list).

Click on your new sweety shape to select it, then click the Save Set. Give your signature a name you’ll remember, pick a location to save to and click OK and you’re all set.






Now it’s time to use your Custom Shape Signature! Switch to the Custom Shape tool by pressing the U key and make sure that you’ve got the tool set to Pixels and Custom Shape in the options bar at the top of Photoshop and of course, choose your new signature custom shape from the Shape Picker.






Create a new delicious layer above your image, photograph, whatever! for your signature to live on by clicking the Add New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, make sure, once again... make sure you’ve set your Foreground color to the one you want your signature to be (here I chose white) and then click and drag your signature onto the workflow making sure to hold down the Shift key to constrain it’s proportions.

And there you have it, your own damn signature as a sweet cute lil' vector Custom Shape perfect for signing photos, adding copyright watermarks, forging your wife’s name on your new motorcycle purchase, whatever your little heart desires!

How to create your own Signature

Before



After

... and here's the reason why I write this tut down ...

How to create your own Signature

that's her sister birthday ^_^

Yupp.. this post is dedicated to dear Meryl

Well, that's "only" it... Since I used my own mark here, no download is available for this lesson… not that you should need one anyway, lol.)