AdoSama's Blog

Anime Relations: Fate/Zero

This text/image tutorial will provide you with a complete walkthrough on how to design a simple and eye catching forum sig in Photoshop.
This is the end result:







So without further ado......oh look my name :3
Anyways lets start.




First pick your picture(s) that you want to use for the forum set
I picked one for the avatar and another one for the signature.
The ones for the signature should (in general) always be wider so they can fit nicely, you can also split it into 2 parts if your image is bigger in height.



Start off by making 2 new projects, one for the avatar and one for the signature





*note: Do not select 32 bit as your color mode since you don't need that color depth for a forum set
Color depth directly contributes to image size and we want to keep our set as small as possible in size.




Drag the picture you want to use as an avatar into an empty project

Now unlock the background layer by double clicking on the empty space left on the lock

Name it as you want, I just left mine as Layer 0

First thing that we're gonna do now is erase the background behind Seibah




Duplicate your layer

Select a simple round brush, set it's Hardness to something between 85-90%
We don't want it to bee too hard, but also not too soft





Scale your brush holding Alt and Right Click while draging your mouse to the left or right.
Use a smaller brush first and delete around Seibah

Then choose a larger one and delete the rest inside





Do this for all the background around her head
Once finished it should look like this

*keep in mind you don't have to erase 100% of the background since it won't be seen anyways*



Now make a copy of the first layer that doesn't have the background erased
Name it ahoge
since what is Seibah without ahoge





Click on the ahoge layer and go to Layer -> Layer mask -> Hide all

Make sure the black mask is selected

And also make sure white is selected as the main color





Use B to select brush and paint out her ahoge





Now enable and select all 3 layers (select first one, hold Shift select last one)





click V , then click and drag the images onto your avatar panel in the tab on the top

Make sure all 3 layers are still selected press Ctrl+T and scale it down till her head fits into the frame

select the first layer go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur

Make sure not to make your background TOO blurry since it will look too artificial, I mostly use anywhere from 2-6 depending on the site and complexity of the background







Now we're gonna create the borders
Select the Line tool from the menu on the left, set the fill to whatever color you want, white in my case, and the stroke to none

Click on the left side of your image and drag to the right side while holding down Shift to make a perfect line

Once done press V and drag it all the way down. I always make my borders 2 pixels from the edges, you may prefer different so this one is up to you
Put the line down and scale it accordingly

Press Ctrl+J to copy the line (or just right click on the layer -> Duplicate layer)
Move it to the top and set it accordingly

Now make a third one by copying the last line, press Ctrl+T, rotate 90°

Move it to the left and scale accordingly




Select all of your lines and press the folder button on the bottom to group them all

Now select color lookup from the....circle thingy...on the bottom





Now I suggest you play around with different LUT's
You're almost always gonna need more than one in order to get it to look nice
Ofc you might argue that I could've just leave it as it is and you're right it does look nice as it is now but I just find it a tad bit overexposed so I am gonna balance it out
I am gonna select the FoggyNight preset

I am also gonna set it to multiply and the opacity to 50%

After that I am gonna add another one, set this one to Crisp Warm preset, set it to Soft Light and opacity to 100%

Looks better but her hair is still overexposed
And Seibah is not happy about that
That's why we're gonna merge the 3 layers

Then select the LUT layers and put them together in with Seibah

Duplicate 2 times so we have a backup and rename the top one "Hair"

Select the Ahoge layer in the Hair group and apply Image -> Adjustments -> Shadows&Highlights

Adjust so that your hair is less exposed, don't mind her face for now

Once you're done click OK

Under the LUT's it gets even more underexposed but that's just what we want
Merge the Hair and the group below it


Once again press E to select the eraser, set it's hardness to minimum and a large size

Delete the following area off

Then set the brush opacity to 30%

Erase the following area off to make the transition a tiny bit smoother




Finally I am gonna add a new LUT, this time one of the KODAK presets and set it's opacity to around 40%

File -> SaveAs...
Make sure to always save your avatars as .jpeg since .png will probably never be below 50kb which is the limit MAL sets to avatars














Now we're onto the fun part
The sig itself
Just like last time, drop your desired picture in a separate project, unlock the background and copy the layer

Select the eraser tool, set the hardness to ~90% and delete around Seibah

Select and drag the 2 layers onto your sig panel
Ctrl+T to resize and fit into the frame

Create a new empty layer above Seibah and rename your layers to BG and Seibah

Go to the left where the color switch is and click on the top box

Pick the color from one of those...thingy flowers I guess

Press B to select brush, set the opacity to ~50%, make it 0% hardness and paint over the flowers

Go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and apply some blur on it, not too much but definitely not too little as well, I set mine around 5

Put the blured layer to ~40% opacity

Make a copy of the BG layer
Select the bottom one and apply blur, 3 should do the trick

Select the top one and appl blur to it, 1 should be enough

Go to Layer -> Layer Mask -> Hide All

Paint around a few flowers and that man in the bottom left, make sure you select the white color like last time

Now select the black color and make the edges a bit better





Add the border liek we did with the avatar

(OPTIONAL - PUT BORDERS BEHIND THE SUBJECT)
Put the lines into a folder, merge the folder
Then select the eraser with E, erase where the line goes over Seibah






Below the borders and above Seibah add soem LUT's
Again play with them see what fits the most and what you like, this will most likely take the most time





(OPTIONAL - ADD SUM NOICE TEXT)
Select the text tool from the toolbox
Pick a nice font, I usually use some very light fonts for these types of sets
Again once done typing, CTRL+T to resize it

Go to the effect settings of a layer (double click layer)
Enable outer glow and add just a tinyyyyyyy bit of dark glow

Add 2 lines to the text if you wish and call it a day

Save your sig as .jpeg
Once again, to keep it <300kb








That's it
Combining these techniques can get you very different results depending on the images and style that you want
Hope you found it useful ^^