Signature files and Avatars besides being a fancy accessory represent your individuality. They make your profile distinct from any other.
While designing a custom avatar and sig is not everyones cup of tea, but the satisfaction of
designing one for yourself is immense.
The designs that catch your eye may look too high-tech and may seem too difficult to design but you should understand that they are not. In-fact with the help of right software and little guidance even you can perform such design feats. Within weeks you will be well on your way to design even winamp skins or wallpapers and sig files are nothing compared to that.
There are lots of software out there(both free and registered) that can help you design one but adobe photoshop stands out among those simply because of its features and availability of tutorials. Most of the graphic designing tuts that you would find on the net are based on photoshop.
Once you acquire photoshop you can start off immediately.
First before going through any tuts or the kind you should spend some time understanding the software. Move your mouse over the different pallettes and tools just to understand what each of them is called. This will help you locate tools easily when going through the tuts at a later stage.
Now open a small image in photoshop. Go to 'filters' menu and apply each filter one by one on the image. Also try different slider settings for each filter. This will help you understand what each filter does. You can always revert back to the original image using the edit/undo tool or edit/step-backward tool.
To be able to progress beyond tuts experimenting with the software and its tools is necessary. You can always follow the tuts but you dont want to be limited to them. If you
want to master the software you have to learn to abuse the software. Similarly you can also experiment with the tools.
Now what you need is good tuts to follow and understand the concepts and shortcuts to designing, you would also need a mentor/guide to answer your queries. You would need
projects when you run out of ideas. What you can do is that you can offer to design sig files for others.
Always remember: if you want to reach somewhere you have to make a start.
And although I am not much of a designer but I would be glad to help anyone who needs it.
For starters visit this link.
text blending using gradient
Ripway is a free site to host files (signature, avatar etc.)
pixel2life is a good source of tuts on designing.
While designing a custom avatar and sig is not everyones cup of tea, but the satisfaction of
designing one for yourself is immense.
The designs that catch your eye may look too high-tech and may seem too difficult to design but you should understand that they are not. In-fact with the help of right software and little guidance even you can perform such design feats. Within weeks you will be well on your way to design even winamp skins or wallpapers and sig files are nothing compared to that.
There are lots of software out there(both free and registered) that can help you design one but adobe photoshop stands out among those simply because of its features and availability of tutorials. Most of the graphic designing tuts that you would find on the net are based on photoshop.
Once you acquire photoshop you can start off immediately.
First before going through any tuts or the kind you should spend some time understanding the software. Move your mouse over the different pallettes and tools just to understand what each of them is called. This will help you locate tools easily when going through the tuts at a later stage.
Now open a small image in photoshop. Go to 'filters' menu and apply each filter one by one on the image. Also try different slider settings for each filter. This will help you understand what each filter does. You can always revert back to the original image using the edit/undo tool or edit/step-backward tool.
To be able to progress beyond tuts experimenting with the software and its tools is necessary. You can always follow the tuts but you dont want to be limited to them. If you
want to master the software you have to learn to abuse the software. Similarly you can also experiment with the tools.
Now what you need is good tuts to follow and understand the concepts and shortcuts to designing, you would also need a mentor/guide to answer your queries. You would need
projects when you run out of ideas. What you can do is that you can offer to design sig files for others.
Always remember: if you want to reach somewhere you have to make a start.
And although I am not much of a designer but I would be glad to help anyone who needs it.
For starters visit this link.
text blending using gradient
Ripway is a free site to host files (signature, avatar etc.)
pixel2life is a good source of tuts on designing.