My very first sig!

[jambog]

I had to make this image as a self-portrait for a design class, and decided to crop in down for a sig. Tell me what you think, and any suggestions for improvements are welcome as the assignment is due Monday and I'm sure it could be much better.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/jambog/8x4.jpg

[Fierce Deity]

That's pretty cool. How'd you do that?

[Klendathu]

Yeah how did you do that?
Especially the busts.

[Fierce Deity]

It'd seem he took a JPEG and put it in... Photoshop maybe? I'm unfamiliar with that program, so that's my guess....

[jambog]

Yeah, I did it with photoshop. I just took a digital pic of myself and then pixilated it, used the find edge filter, pixilated some more added a green hue then the blue hue. I made the electric arcs using the clouds filter. I used tuts as a guide since I'm not very experienced at photoshop. Once I followed the tuts I tweaked stuff to get my own thing added a lot of blending to get the transparent look. I'm not sure exactly where I got the tuts but google Photoshop tuts + Circuit Board and Electric Arc and you will probably find some of the ones that got me started. I made the earth from scratch just a blue circle with green blotches then used text for the bianary, rotated the text then spherized it to make it look 3D then added the lens flare filter for the spot of light in the middle. The circuit board tuts that got me started on my busts where pretty simple, the electric arcs where a little more difficult, but still at a beginner level.

[harger]

u should get an A+ for that Monday i think its cool.

[Iconoclast]

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/jambog/8x4.jpg

I am no professional at image design; my specialty lies in optimizing images for best quality and lowest file size, GIF animation optimizations, etc. I have never before work with fine images like this. I do, even so, have a few tricks and transformations of my own.

The Colorize effect (with different paramaters on the left and right half of the image):

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j112/rswedlo/New_Sig.png

The Motion Blur effect:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j112/rswedlo/New_Sig2.png

The starburst effect:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j112/rswedlo/New_Sig3.png

The Colorization effect and Brightness/Contrast effect:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j112/rswedlo/New_Sig4.png

[Systemeth]

Very nice Mr. Clast.

[jambog]

I am no professional at image design; my specialty lies in optimizing images for best quality and lowest file size, GIF animation optimizations, etc. I have never before work with fine images like this. I do, even so, have a few tricks and transformations of my own.

The starburst effect:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j112/rswedlo/New_Sig3.png

This one has inspired me to add a similar, but much more subtle effect. The rays of light were much more yellow, but through blending they turned a little on the greenish yellow side which I don't like as much, but got fed up with trying to fix it. This is the image I think I am most happy with.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/jambog/final429x200.jpg

I also made some just for fun to see how they would look. I like them, but think they seem too busy. I like to keep it simple.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/jambog/new1.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/jambog/new2.jpg

[Iconoclast]

My only complaint is that you saved your image in JPEG format. I don't care which program you use to save it; unless you're saving a 1x1 pixel image that's just a gray pixel, JPEG will cause SOME loss of quality in your image. Plus, PNG is lower in file size for images like these, so I recommend that. I guess both look fine for this particular image, so use whatever you want.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/jambog/final429x200.jpg

I have no suggestions; it looks like a finished masterpiece.

[jambog]

My only complaint is that you saved your image in JPEG format. I don't care which program you use to save it; unless you're saving a 1x1 pixel image that's just a gray pixel, JPEG will cause SOME loss of quality in your image. Plus, PNG is lower in file size for images like these, so I recommend that. I guess both look fine for this particular image, so use whatever you want.

I have no suggestions; it looks like a finished masterpiece.

For some reason when I save as PNG in photoshop they are bigger in file size. I saved my image as both PNG and JPEG and the PNG was more then double the size of the JPEG (73KB for JPEG and 196KB for PNG). I'm assuming this as something to do with photoshop as I noticed in your first post your PNG files were smaller then my JPEG that you edited. I even tried saving the 73KB JPEG as a PNG in Microsoft Paint and it increased the size by more then 3 times to 238KB. So I save in JPEG as it is the smallest file size I can save using any of the programs I have. What program do you use to save JPEGs to PNGs? When I printed my image I printed from a TIFF file, which as far as I know doesn't lose quality. I also keep a backup copy in the photoshop PSD format incase I want to edit it more one day. I only used JPEG for when I post to the web.

[Iconoclast]

I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7. I think you have to pay for the latest version or something....

Try Microsoft Paint to save as PNGs; that should work just as well as Paint Shop Pro, though maybe a little variation.

Edit: I guess it was because of the formatting...PNG still seems higher in file size. Probably because of the high color quality in your image and the variation in color across the image. Oh, well. Use JPEG then, wth.

[pizzaman]

Looks pretty nice. I like how you can see the layers of different images combined together. Looks like you used some overlay in the sig too? It's pretty good, although I have no idea how you make that lightning.... Did you copy it from somewhere and put it in the image, or did you make it yourself?

P.S. Are you taking a Photoshop class then?

[jambog]

Looks pretty nice. I like how you can see the layers of different images combined together. Looks like you used some overlay in the sig too? It's pretty good, although I have no idea how you make that lightning.... Did you copy it from somewhere and put it in the image, or did you make it yourself?

P.S. Are you taking a Photoshop class then?

I found a tutorial online about how to make electric arcs and such, so I made it myself but couldn't have done it without a tut. No, I'm not taking a photoshop class yet, it's for a 2D design class. Normally we aren't allowed to make our projects on the PC, we have to do it hands on by tracing, painting, drawing, colloguing etc, but for our final project the teacher said we could use any medium including computer programs. I hate painting, so figured it was time to learn some actual tuts and make a decent composition in photoshop. I learned a lot by doing this project though just from reading online tutorials and such. I take an actual photoshop class next semester so hopefully it will make me better at blending and touching up the details.

For the project we had to include disharmonious color, gradation, visual texture, and transparency and it had to be a self portrait. I think that my composition has all of those things, so hopefully I will get an okay grade. Its much more dependant upon our skills of composition then it is our computer skills. I think there were only me and one other person in the class that were planning on making our project in photoshop though.

[pizzaman]

That's good to hear, I might take a photoshop class myself in a few years. I would like to take flash and HTML first though. Those are probably the key elements to creating any good webpage, and great images. I'm still in highschool, but there is a program called Running Start here in Washington. It makes it so that students can go to a community college for their Junior and Senior years at highschool, and the credits count toward youre college and highschool credits. So it's pretty much a way to skip 2 years of school, and have access to a college when you're 16.