Well, first of all I'd like to say I know that whenever I make threads for CC on my sigs I don't really re-do any of them and it kinda seems like I don't take the criticism. The thing is I really enjoy the criticism but I'm not really sure why I don't re-do any of the sigs, so I figured this time I will try to. And the reason why I don't make sigs as quickly as some of the other newcomers here is because I'm really, really picky with renders/stocks :( Also, this is probably the second sig I've ever made that I'm relatively proud of :P

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any ideas on a border/text? Those are my weak spots D:

Anyone? :(

Weird render, other than that maybe you can try to B&W the whole sig except the eagles' eyes

Weird render, other than that maybe you can try to B&W the whole sig except the eagles' eyes

 

Yeah, it is pretty weird I guess. Here's the stock if anyone wants to see it: http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/believe/i ... image5.jpg

 

 

 

 

Eh... I don't really like black and white sigs :S

It has potential, the weird brushing in some areas of the tag brings it down. Also, if you stay picky with renders, then you'll never get good, because you won't be experimenting. Maybe try stocks too :thumbup:

By weird brushing, do you mean the part in the center-bottom? I put it there to make it seem less monotone-y. And the part in the top-right is supposed to be a light source :-#

I should say that redoing signatures, most of the time, is just a waste. Just take the lessons you've learned and make sure to apply them to the next. That way it is less of "Well this guy said this should be here so I will put it here" and more of "Well, this looks bad.. so what can I do to possibly fix it for my next image?". Much more involvement on your part.

 

 

 

Anyways the flow is very iffy and I'm not sure what exactly you've done here other than color correction and some light brushing. I'm also not sure if you are even allowed to use the image as a stock photo, although it's not like anyone here even cares about that.

 

 

 

I would start by trying to get a more uniform color. In photoshop that would be Ctrl+B for Color Balance which will allow you to play around with the color correction for an image. This is great to get a starting idea of what you want. Like, do you want a Red/greenish image, or maybe a blue image with red highlights? From there I would apply a Curves adjustment layer, which allows you to adjust not only the contrast in general but the contrast and color settings for Red/Green/Blue. (I know curves isn't actually "contrast" but trying to explain it here without getting long lol) This will give your image a bit more contrasted look and more interesting feel to it.

 

 

 

 

 

As far as any sort of color correction goes here is what I did in a few minutes with your B/W image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It consists of

 

 

 

1x Color balance layer: Mostly just Blue/Cyan adjustment

 

1x Curves layer: Auto adjust to start, adjust red up a bit, green down, blue up

 

1x Gradient Map layer: B/W gradient, set to color dodge @ 35% opacity

 

 

 

and I kept the eye color in. So just a 5 minute retouch to show you what is possible. And... well, if you use gimp maybe someone else can translate where these things are in it.