Metroid

Nice nad. I used alyn's tutorials when I learned how to make a good planet. Anyone into space scenes should definetly visit his page. His guidelines/tutorials help alot.

Same here.. Nice entry.. although I don't like the filters you added to the sky/left mountains. :P

Thanks for the comments. :)

Alright. The bad: -The text color doesn't match very well -The border is too fat (cut it in half maybe...) -You used "rabies_star" brushes to make your stars, instead of making them yourself. -The space scene has no nebulae - Not really NEEDED.. but when you have a pure space scene.. it's best if you have one. The good: -The planet texture is very nice. -You made two planets and was creative instead of just sticking to one like most people would -The star brushing is well placed -The text is good, aside from the color -The border is perfect.. just too fat Try adding a nebulae.. maybe some distant galaxys or planets aswell. And don't use rabies' brushes.. you're better off rendering noise stars probably. Good work for a first, just lacks detail.

I never thought that heh. ;) Nice outcome! :) Going to rate your sig in a second... edit: And the texture is awesome in that planet. Did you use any other tutorials to make the planet? Because I think I saw that texture on dA before in a tutorial, alyn's I think.

That sub text would take up the entire sig o.O

hehe.. don't think that way. ;)

Looking at this from a logic standpoint. One would say it'd be the same as before you were born, you were, well.. dead. Same thing after you die. You would have no consciousness. But like I said, that is what one would say looking at it from a logic standpoint. That is not my opinion. But then you requested no religion to be brought into this so there is not much room for anyone to say anything.

oops.. that was bad. :oops: Thanks for pointing that out. Fixing it now. ;)

Updated - Added alot of my newest sigs, and a tutorial I recently made. ;)

But sometimes the person is the same color as the background, or similar, and the magic wand will only get rid of a portion of the background if you get rid of say, a persons neck for example. And then you can't cut out the render. In this case you would use the lasso tool and manually cut out a selection of the background. :) Use the lasso tool, and select any layers you want to get rid of. Once you've made your selection hit "delete".

Alot of people have asked me to write a tutorial on how to make a complete terraspace sig. And I've said it alot.. it's too complex to cover everything in just one tutorial. So I figure a planet tutorial for those who don't know where to find one will be the next best thing. ;) This tutorial will cover how to create a simple planet. You can experiment with making your own texture in PS if you want. Let's get started then... 1. - Creating a Circle Make a new document in Photoshop about 500x500 pixels in size. You can make it bigger/smaller if you'd like. But this is the size I'll be using. It's perfect because there is no need for zooming in/out to see the entire image. And it is big enough to use for a large piece aswell. Now select the "Elliptical Marquee Tool" (right click on the top right icon in the tool panel if you're having trouble finding it). Hold shift and drag the tool from the top left to the bottom right to make a perfect circle selection like the one below. Right click inside the selection and click "Fill" Make the color black, and the opacity 100%. Name this layer "Lighting" (right click on the layer and select "Layer Properties"). 2. - Adding a texture Now hit Ctrl + J to duplicate that layer. Name this layer "Texture". Find a texture on deviantArt/resource site or just use the one I used. (click). Textures are easy to make, it's basically a highly manipulated image, such as a rock/real planet etc. Anyway, open the texture. and go to Edit>Define Pattern, name this whatever you want. Click Ok. Close the texture image now, and go back to your planet. Right click on the "Texture" layer and select "Blending options". Select "Pattern Overlay" Click the drop down arrow and select your texture that you saved earlier. Click Ok. 3. - Spherizing Now hit Ctrl+Shift+N and click "Ok", then click Image>Apply Image... click "Ok". Then click Filter>Distort>Spherize... use 100% and click "Ok". Now it looks alot more like a planet, eh? :) 4. - Lighting There are many different methods of adding lighting. I personally don't use this method. But it's the easiest to explain. Now, remember that lighting layer we made first (called "Lighting")? (that should still be at the bottom of the layer list) Bring it to the top and go to Filter>Distort>Spherize, and keep it at 100% opacity, click "Ok". Now, change the "Fill" to 0% for the "Lighting" Layer. (Fill is right under "Opacity"). Now, right click on the "Lighting" layer and select blending options. Tick "Inner Shadow", "Outer Glow", and "Inner Glow". Use these settings for "Inner Shadow": Use these settings for "Outer Glow": Use these settings for "Inner Glow": 5. - Shading Doesn't look quite finished eh? Well this is the last step. :) Make a selection like this with the lasso tool on whatever side the darker side is on: Don't worry if the selection is sloppy, it doesn't matter much. Right click inside the selection and click "Feather". Make the feather 60 pixels if your image is 500x500. Or always make the feather the same as the size of the image, except take one zero away, and add ten. (e.g: if the image is 900x900 the feather would be 100 pixels). Right click inside the selection after feathering and click "Fill". Make it 100% opacity, and black (#000000) as the color. Tone the opacity of the layer down to about 70% or whatever suits you. And you're done! 6. - Skewing The edges are probably sharp, I know. So if you want to get rid of this, hit Ctrl+Shift+N, name the layer "Planet" and click "Ok". Go to Image>Apply Image... And click "Ok". Delete ALL of your other layers (remember to save your progress before doing this of course!) and select the "Planet" layer. Go to Edit>Transform>Skew and change the W: to 30% and the H: to 30% at the top toolbar. Or more/less to your liking. My end result: Hope you learned something from this tutorial. :)

Especialy when you consider most of us have worked for years to get to where we are. I've been working in photoshop and the likes for probaly close to 4 years now and I still have a lot to learn. Going off topic here, I think your terragen skills are amazing. I've been using photoshop/terragen for 2-3 years, and I just got decent with sig making about a month ago. I still have alot to learn though, it takes work to get good at anything.

Blending - The colors of the background don't match the stock. The stock is not effected at all by the background. When she should have a slight blue color to her skin. This would help blending a little, if you wanted to keep the same color bg. And to be honest. I don't like your comment about having to be born amazing at graphics to be good, And having no life to be good. Yes, this is basically what you said, whether you meant it that way or not.

Dont you have to invert selection after feathering? Nice catch. I forgot to mention that. You can also just not connect the selection, instead loop back around to the beginning of it when you've almost connected the starting and finishing line. That was probably gibberish but if it was, just invert the selection. Right click inside the selection>Invert.

"Simplicity" sigs that DO work are usually not very simple at all... It just looks like they are.

Have a look at this carefully and you'll understand. http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=586790 If you have any questions that aren't in there, just ask them in that topic and I'll do my best to answer them. :)

Laughing at that statement eh? The head command is mainly used for search engines to gather information about the page, things inside the head command are loaded first. And the head command can cause errors sometimes (certain parts of the page won't load, or only what is inside the head command will), not having the head command will never cause errors that can only be fixed by adding it. Thus it's just about useless. Basically, head commands are used when you want to add META tags to let your site get more traffic from searches, or if you want certain data to load before everything else. That is about it.

Wow, thank you very much. :)

Bad: -No Border (Actually there may be one.. but it's hard to see) -No depth -Render doesn't blend -No theme -No Light source Good: -The wave/ripple effect looks nice -The text is alright. Try reading my abstract tutorial, or one of cads tutorials in the 'FAQ sticky'.

Butterfly made with the brush/selection tool. Birds made with the pencil tool. (basically a pixel, only a little easier to make) Planet started from a simple circle, added a light source overlay, then added textures to the planet, 3d/sphereize filters etc. (Try searching for a tutorial on planets.. it'll explain better. ;)) Space scene made with a gradient + noise filter at super low opacity, then some 1 pixel dots manually made. First landscape rendered in terragen, messed with the atomsphere until I liked the result, used a grass/rock texture then added a few textures of my own in photoshop. Second landscape (in the bg) is a overlay layer with my own texturing over it. And a original rock texture. Third terragen (which connects to the background terragen to the right) which is barely noticable is the exact same thing as the second terragen, only lower opacity and shaped different of course. Then finally I added a smokey look to the atmosphere. Just some smudging of the lighter areas of the terragen render, then blurred alot, and lower opacity. And some other extra stuff like apply image layers + filters. That is how I made the entire sig. Hope it helps. ;)

bump - I'd really like more rates on this. ;) If it helps.. this is not a manip. It's a landscape I rendered with terragen. Planet/butterfly/birds made in photoshop. Space scene made in PS aswell.

Thank you. :)

Try adding the css below the command. The command is really useless, I'd recommend not using it. If you still have problems, then show us the actual css coding so we can see if anything is wrong there.

No, Photoshop OR Dither it. Photoshopping (Or in other words smudging/blurring the background to make it smoother) the background wouldn't be so bad considering it's just the background. But dithering it would work just as well I think.