Basic Photoshop Guide

MythicaL

I've set up a little guide for those people who don't know how to use Photoshop, but want to create basic signatures, avatars, or other images. I'm going to be using Photoshop CS to demonstrate this, because it has a good interface and easiest to work with (in my opinion).

First, open up your Photoshop, whether it be 6, 7, CS, or whatever version it is, and you should see a welcome screen or this screen below:



Close the welcome screen if you get one. Now, select File >> New from the menubar on the top left, and you should come across this:



Select the size you want from there, the color mode, background type, etc. But since this is just a basic tutorial, just fill in 640 for the Width and 480 for the Height. Leave everything else as it is. Then click OK.

You should now be looking at a window inside the program, with a white background, as shown (if you see something else, try resetting to Photoshop's default settings by holding ALT+CTRL+SHIFT when the program starts. Then press Reset when the box appears):



Now, we're going to create the background. For a really simple background, go up to the Menu Bar at the top; select Filter >> Texture >> Stained Glass (not so sure if earlier versions have this filter; if not use a different texture) A box should come up, previewing the filter. Click OK to the right. You should have something similar to this:



Now, we're going to have to change the background a little bit, since the default white and black is ugly. So go up to the Menu Bar again, click Filter >> Artistic >> Neon Glow. The preview box should come up again; click OK. You should have this now:

MythicaL

We now have to crop, or remove, parts of the picture. Click the Crop tool on the mini window to the left, circled here:



Now, what I like to do is when I select Crop, there is a new menu that appears below the Menu Bar, with some boxes and buttons. Since DriverHeaven's max dimension size for signatures is 400x100, you want a 4:1 ratio crop size. So in the Width box, type in '4', and in the Height box, type '1'. There, now you have a 4:1 ratio crop size ready. If you're not sure what I mean, here's an example, shown in red:



Now, move the cursor over the window that has your picture in it. You should now see the crop icon instead of the cursor. Now what you want to do is click and hold the mouse so that you select a big part of the picture. What I mean by that is, hold the mouse down and drag it to the right, selecting a huge part of the picture, and then go of the mouse button. You should now see the box you selected, but the rest is a darker color. That means you only want the inside of what you selected. Example shown here:



Now hit Enter on your keyboard, and whah-la! You have now cropped the picture:



Now we need to add text; your name if making a signature. So on the left mini window, shown, select the big 'T', so you can put a font in your image:

MythicaL

Once you click the big 'T', another sub-menu below the menu bar at the top will appear, this time for fonts. From the first drop box, select 'Arial Black'; in the third box, select size 30, and in the fourth box for anti-aliasing, select 'Smooth'. Also pick a color to the right of the alignment methods. I will choose white. Now, inside the picture window (you should see the 'T' cursor), hold down the mouse button and select a big box around the picture, then let go of the mouse button. A text box (or text cursor) will appear. This is what you type what you want:



Press escape on the keyboard so that the text is entered into the picture. What, you want to move the text to somewhere else? Easy. Click the pointer and move icon (Move Tool) that is on the top right of the mini window, shown here:



Then once you have clicked that, click on the text, hold it down, and drag it to an area you want, in my case, the bottom right corner. You should have something like this now:



Now, as you may have noticed, the size is most likely way over 400x100. So we have to resize the image. To do that, go to the Menu Bar at the top, and select Image >> Image Size. A box should now appear that displays the image size. in the Width box, type in 400, and the Height should automatically change to 100. Now at the bottom of the box, you should see something that says Resample Image, and a drop box. Personally, I pick Bicubic Smoother, because it makes text and other objects look alot smoother but you can leave it alone or pick what you want, it depends. I will pick Bicubic Smoother:



Finished product should looks something like this:



Now you just gotta save the image. So at the menu bar at the top, go to File >> Save. Select a filename for the image, such as myelitesignature, and change the format to .jpeg. You should also save it in a directory you can easily access later. Then click the Save box, and select about an 8, 9, or 10 (at the most) quality, or you'll make the DriverHeaven pages load slower!

That's all there is to a basic sig/image/avatar. Sorry if it wasn't to your standards, or if you don't have some of the filters I used, but I recommend you experiment around with Photoshop, because sooner or later you will get the hang of it, as I did (seeing as how I didn't know ANYTHING when I started to use it about nine months ago).

mkk

Well done. If you have the time i suggest adding a section on how to resize images in a good way. It's something that a lot of users could benefit from.

MythicaL

Yeah I'm going to add some more when I get home from school

dj_stick

nice work, looking forwared to reading more

MythicaL

OK, since mkk requested to resize images, here's a little tutorial on that:

Well first, you open up your picture, such as this Hitman one I recreated (hehe):



So now you have to resize it. Go to the Menu Bar at the top, select Image >> Image Size. Then you should get a box like this:



Now, as an example, I'm going to resize it to 1024x768 (pixel resize). Notice I have all the options checked down below (especially notice the Constrain Proportions box):



See how when you enter 1024 into the Width, the Height automatically changes? Re-enter enter 1152 into the box, so that you return to the default size (but don't press OK). Now, uncheck the Constrain Proportions box, and type in 1024 in the Width box again. See how the Height didn't change? Now you should have 1024x864 for the pixel size:



Press OK on that and you should see this stretched image:



Now undo what you just did by pressing CTRL+ALT+Z, until you get back to the default size of 1152x864 (the 1152x864 reprents YOUR default image size). Now, go back to Image >> Image Size, and recheck Constain Proportions. Now enter 1024 in the Width again, and you should have 1024x768. Press OK, and you'll have this:



Now the image is no longer stretched, but kept the same proportion size.