A simple beginners way of making that first car signature...

by Stampers Mon Sep 15, 2008 5:36 pm

Ok, well i'm writing this to help those of you that want to make signatures yourself. i get alot of people asking me to make signatures for them, and i also get alot of people asking me to give them help and tutorials on how to make their own.

Before you start however, you'll need these things..

1) Adobe Photoshop
2) A decent working mouse and keyboard (obviously most of you should have this already in order to play DC)
3) Competence to read the instructions (i say this, because i dont want pm's flooding my inbox about how to do this, and how to do that. ive laid the tutorial out as basic as possible to allow people to understand it.)
4) some imagination!

This tutorial is to help you get the image of your car from DC, and cut it out to be able to edit it on photoshop. ok well, i'll start here...

First off, choose the car you want in your signature and open up Drift Shop...

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... SR_061608_001

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... SR_061608_001

Then put the Drift Shop items that you want on your car (paint, decal, rims, wing etc...) and get the car at the angle that you'd like and press the 'PRINT SCREEN' button found somewhere on your keyboard...

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... SR_061608_002

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... SR_061608_002

Now you need to open up the image found in your DC screenshot directory into Adobe Photoshop. once opened, choose the eraser tool on the left, and change the size to around 100. then start erasing the area around the car, so that only the car is left. leave a small outline of background, as that can be dealt with later....

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-1

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-1

Now that you have an edge, its time to clean it up so you can get as close to the car as possible, giving it a nice clean edge. to do this, select the 'magic wand' tool found on the left, and click on areas around your car. what this does, is highlight tones around the car, and leaves a dotted line on that area. once you have that dotted line, its safe to press DELETE and it will remove that area of rubbish for you...

then once you have a good enough edge, zoom in and use a smaller eraser this time to clean up any mess on the edges...

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-3

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-3

The next thing to do, is to take the car image from the white background it is attached to. to do this, select the 'magic wand' tool again, and click anywhere on the white space around your car. this will create a series of dotted lines. then you need to press..
CTRL+SHIFT+I
This inverts the selection to the car ONLY. then right click the car, and choose 'layer via copy' from the drop down menu that appears...

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-4

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-4

Once this has been done, make a new canvas with the size of 1024x768 with a transparent background....

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-5

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-5

Then go back to the original image, and click the layer that you copied of the car itself without the background. then drag the layer from the 'layer pallete' onto the new project that you started (the blank 1024x768 window). this allows you to start editing and can save the previous project as a back-up in case you mess anything up...

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-6

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-6

And there you have your clean cut car, onto a new project that you can edit and mess around with. i know that the size of the new project isnt the correct size for a signature, but it gives you the basis of being able to edit it and change the look of the background and car.

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-7

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Untitled-7

And with a little bit of imagination you can make it look like this...

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Final

And to finish with, i threw it all together into one simple signature, by making a new file, dragging all the layers and resizing them, and adding as bit of text onto it too. i know, it looks like crap, but i only stuck it on there altogether like that quickly, as to show you how to make a signature. i wasnt going for the Turner prize award with this one. heres the finished result...

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Sigtutorialsigcopy

A simple beginners way of making that first car signature... Sigtutorialsigcopy

Well there we have it.
I hope this helped some, if not all of you that needed some tips on starting your own signatures.
i might do a more advanced 2nd tutorial in future showing how to use effects and tools to a better extent, allowing you to come up with different styles, but i'll leave it for a while to see what you guys make of this.

Happy Sig making!

Stampers.

by darrent- Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:21 pm

Is adobe photoshop free to download to ? or is there something else close to this program ?

by noize Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:51 pm

google gimpshop on sourceforge, its a fre alternative

other alternatives are inkscape and its pretty decent at making vector images.

by Stampers Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:21 pm

i googled Gimpshop. Leather fetish gear anyone?

by Trix Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:09 pm

Nice tutorial however I think using the magnetic lasso tool is better and faster than doing all that erasing.

by Stampers Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:20 pm

Trix wrote:Nice tutorial however I think using the magnetic lasso tool is better and faster than doing all that erasing.

good point. the only thing with the magnetic lasso tool is the irritating way in which it anchors the line.
i know you can do manual anchors on it, but it can sometimes anchor itself in the most awkward way.
especially when going around the front bumper of a boxy car (like the Fondo front bumper).

but yeah, the magnetic lasso is definitely faster.

by Trix Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:39 pm

it can seem hard at first but you'll find it is a very powerful tool. Aside from manually adding points you can control the sensitivity which can help it decide which colours to snap to and which not to. also the speed that you move the mouse when you drag dictates how many anchors are added. For long straight areas move the mouse fast to add straight lines with few anchors at curvy or angled areas move the mouse slowly to add many anchor points for the best results. And trouble spots where you might miss a part you can go back after and use one of the other selection tools to add to the current selection.

Or you could use the mask tool.

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A simple beginners way of making that first car signature...

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