GIMP signature guide.

[DeletedUser]

Hi to all. This is a simple guide to help people with GIMP start creating their own signatures. This guide is not comprehensive and it will not show you how to make brilliant signatures, it will hopefully provide you the tools to do so.

This is obviously very image heavy. So it might take some time to load. That is why spoilers have been put there.

Forum rules:
No obscenity, max size 700x120 pixels

Starting off:

The first rule to good signature making is a theme. When people request signatures they are required to say what they want. Many people pick a favourite character from a game or a film, while others ask for something to do with grepolis.

Here are a few examples of signatures I have made using GIMP, the styles are completely different for each person I make a signature for. Every signature maker has a different style which appeal to different people. Your style will be your own and this is a good reason to make your own sig.

Other signatures I have Made

For this tutorial you will need to download GIMP

It is multiplatform and I am on a mac so some screenshots may be different to your version but I will try and help if I can get to a PC.

GIMP saves files as .xcf To upload to a image hosting website change to .png or .jpeg



Drop Shadow:

Spoiler

This tool creates a new layer. It creates a shadow of a selected layer, you can change the position/colour/opacity and size. It is important to select the right layer. Here you can see a before and after shot of the drop shadow. You also see in the layers tab how the drop shadow created a new layer. If it had all been one layer then The drop shadow would be of the whole picture which is not a good effect

The original image.

This is how to get to drop shadow on a mac, it should be similar on linux or windows.

Drop shadow toolbar.

Offset y and x to create depth.

Colour is generally black but experiment with it.

Opacity is how much it shows basically. I just picked a random value here.

With drop shadow

new layer created

 

[DeletedUser]

Fonts:

Spoiler

Having a good selection of fonts is useful but not essential, if you are going to make signatures for people they may want a particular style of font. To find fonts for GIMP just google them or use this site.

www.dafont.com

Be careful not to mix your fonts to much, it can make it look messy. The most I will use on one sig is 2, but it is up to you.

You might need to install the fonts. I will try and find out how to do this on a PC and Linux if people request it, it may be the same. On a mac you will need to follow these pictures.

You will have to select the directory etc and then probably restart GIMP. Therefore it is a good idea to install them before you start a sig.

Picking a font. You simply click the button highlighted below and a drop down menu will appear, alternatively you can type the name of the font into the box next to that.

demsccrstd sent me this to tell people how to install fonts on a PC. Thanks.

Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization -> Fonts

Once you get to the Fonts file you will be able to view all the fonts that you have installed on your PC. (Now when I download fonts I usually download them to a separate fonts folder. You can do this or not but you just want to make sure that you know where the font file is.)

In order to install the font that you downloaded make sure that the computers font folder is open. Then, just open the folder or location that the font file is located and simply drag and drop the font file into the computers font folder. Presto! The font is now installed on your computer and you can select it in GIMP!

Tools:

Spoiler

There are many tools on GIMP. You will most likely have used MS paint and most if not all of them should be there.

I will try to show you how to use most of the available tools.

This is your toolbox.

These are some of my brushes you can scale up the brushes using the scale slider.

This is the gradient tool. There are many options for it, like which way the gradient will go and what colours to use.

These are some of the bucket fill options

This is the text tool.

The selection tools allow you to select in different shapes, the paths tool can create a path that has some advanced uses.

The select colour tool will change the foreground colour to that of a pixel or of an average of pixels around where you click.

The select by colour tool will select all the pixels of a colour in the picture.

The move tool allows you to move layers.

The rotate tool allows you to rotate your image.

The scale tool allows you to scale up or down or stretch your image.

The shear and perspective tools allow you to modify your image but aren't that useful in signatures.

The bucket tools fills in with colour all connecting pixels of one colour.

The gradient tool allows you to create a gradient. If you use it on top of your image it will cover everything. Either start off with it or use it behind a transparent layer.

The brush tool can be used to draw, it is better than the pencil tool because it creates smoother lines.
However the pencil tool is useful if you want to use the bucket tool as it only uses one colour it does not blend at all.

The eraser tool is the brush tool using the background colour.

The airbrush tool is similar to the normal brush.

The Blur/Sharpen tool lets you blur things and sharpening an image should make it clearer by making the difference between lighter and darker colours more clear.

The Smudge tool is as described.

The Dodge/Burn tool can make things lighter or darker. It can pick out highlights/midtones/shadows.

 

[DeletedUser]

Layers:

Spoiler

Layers are important, you can create/delete/edit layers in your toolbox.
i would suggest naming your layers to stop confusion.

This is your layer toolbox

This is an example image

This is when you click create a new layer

You can hide layers, by clicking the eye, If you do this the image will be saved like this.

This is the example image when the first layer is hidden.

 

[DeletedUser]

How to create borders:

Spoiler

Now I have shown you how to create layers I can show you how to create a border easily.

You will need a new transparent layer.
Then you need to go to select --> all

Then shrink your selection by a few pixels, I use 3-5 although some people prefer a single pixel.

Then invert your selection.

Then fill with a colour or use the gradient tool. That is how I did the borders in the first 3 images

Here is an image with a border.

Brushes:

Spoiler

You will want a wide range of brushes. You can google them. Just search for Photoshop Brushes or search for GIMP brushes. They will need to be installed. This is very simialr to the font installation it is just slightly higher on the list. See post #2

 

[DeletedUser]

Your first Signature:

Spoiler

I will create a relatively simple signature. It may not be very good but it should show you how to use GIMP.

Now the first thing I did was search on google images for charizard render. The reason I searched for render was because I wanted a clear image without a background.

I created a new image in GIMP 1000x1000 px. Then it went to layers--->transparency--->Add alpha channel.

Then I selected by colour clicked on the white background and deleted.

Lots of grey boxes will appear, don't worry these are not there in reality.

I copied the image I wanted (http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k297/Koopatroopa2k6/High%20Quality%20SSBB%20Renders/Charizard.png) and pasted it into my image.

I then went to the layers box and slected the floating layer by right clicking it. I then selected anchor layer.

Then I went to Image---->Autocrop Image.

Then I went to Image---->Scale Image and scaled it down to 120px in height.

Just leave this image for a moment save it if you wish.

Then I created a new Image 500x120px.

I filled it with a purple colour.

I then created a new layer.

I then selected white as my Foreground colour

I then went to the gradient tool. On the gradient tool I selected Fg(white) to transparent. I selected radial, (drop down box standard is linear), then I lowered the opacity to about 30. I then used this in the right hand corner a few times to get the effect shown below.

Then I used my Cloud brushes to build up a cloud base. I generally used black. I did use a light colour near to the glow and then mostly covered them with darker clouds. I used a Moon brush I have over most of the glow to create this.

Then I went to the other picture. I have it so i can see both pictures. Do this if possible. I clicked on the layer itself and dragged it over to the 500x120px image. You could probably just copy and paste if you want.

I then moved it to the side and selected the text tool and wrote charizard in white.

I then created a border (see post #4).

This is my final image. It took me about 3 minutes to complete even with the screenshots. You can spend a lot longer and create a great image.

 

[DeletedUser]

Very good guide carf. May switch to GIMP now

 

[DeletedUser]

Ty, it will be finished at some point. Any questions are welcome.

 

[DeletedUser2663]

cheers. man i saw this and was like "Mean, can finnaly make myself a siggy!". downloading gimp now and if your guide works for me ill post here how good it is and hopefully with a siggy i made!

 

[DeletedUser2663]

K first question. im using windows xp.

in your guide you didnt actually seem to explain how to choose a font.

 

[DeletedUser]

Nice guide carf!

 

[DeletedUser]

Damn... GIMP went to dutch for me... how do I change the language?

 

[DeletedUser]

@ Metalcore, Have you selected the text box? if so then it should be this circled in red. Click it and a large list will appear.

@ Orangeopti I am guessing you are on Windows? Where the language is in dutch? Or did it just mess up? If the Windows is in dutch then I think I can help.

 

[DeletedUser]

if you go to
C:\\Program Files\\GIMP-2.0\\lib\\locale

and delete all files without en_ It may work. Or simply move the dutch file somewhere else if you want to use it ever again.


or try and find
the locale folder in GIMP

cd /Applications/Gimp.app/Contents/Resources/share/locale/


This is the mac^

deleting the dutch folder or moving it should work.

 

[DeletedUser]

Note: The maximum size of your custom image is 700 by 120 pixels or 9.8 KB (whichever is smaller)

Can this be right? everyone I see has a larger file size than that for their sig?

Carf, even yours is about 89 KB

 

[DeletedUser]

I think that is when you are uploading to this site.

 

[DeletedUser]

Even when I link to a hosted image it says it is too large.... the file is only 102 KB on disk...

this is it, but will not work as my sig for some reason

 

[DeletedUser]

Check the how to upload your signature guide in my sig. use img tags in the text box in the edit your signature section.

 

[DeletedUser]

Great! I'll give it a try

That seems to have done it...although it does not show on earlier posts... THANKS!

 

[DeletedUser]

You need to make a new post then it will work

 

[DeletedUser]

It worked, thanks!