[civicsi94]

This will be a guide to help those who are interested in using motion blue and making animated sigs (.gif format)

System requirements: Adobe Photoshop CS1 or CS2, Adobe ImageReady

This sig will have some animated text. This is very simple, it just takes patience. NOTE: the more frames you put in your sig, the larger the file will be and then you will need to reduce resolution of the sig in order to still have the sig not take up too much space.

I like to play music when making a sig so feel free to do the same.

These are the two pictures I will be using.

Here is the finished product.

Now let’s get started.

The first step is to open Photoshop and open the two pictures that you saved somewhere on your computer. I put them in the corner for the time being because they were big pictures.

Now create your canvas for your sig. here are my settings. 500x80pix

 

[civicsi94]

Next let’s select the picture with the car picture taken from the side position and click and hold the picture and drag it to the sig canvas

Now maximize the size canvas and let’s get to work. Now we will shrink the picture. Click Edit->Free Transform on the top menu.

Now hold the shift key and go to a corner of the pic. Now click and hold a corner and pull in the opposite direction to shrink the picture while holding the shift key. The shift key allows the picture to shrink equally so the picture doesn’t looks stretched and what not.

Shrink and move the picture similar to this if you can

Now double click the picture and not that that is done, take the maximize off the sig so we can take the other picture and put that in the sig. The steps are the same.

Select the other picture and click, hold, and drag and drop that in the sig canvas.
Maximize the sig canvas
Click Edit->Free Transform
Click and hold to shrink the picture and remember to hold the shift key.

Get the picture to about this size if you can, I also added a slight tilt by rotating the picture alittle.

Lets use the magnifying glass to zoom in do use some effects. Zoom in to about here. I had to move my tools bar to the side so we can work on the picture

 

[civicsi94]

Now select the Polygonal lasso tool. It’s the second tool down from the top left on you tools. If not then right click that block as so

Now make some clicks around the car and make a starting point. Try to click as close to the car as possible without actually clicking on the car. This will be a outline to at a blur effect. NOTE: if you mess up then double click and click the selected area and start over. I will give some shots, the smaller the interval strings the more accurate it will be.

Loop back to where you started. You will see a little circle icon on your cursor when you can connect the two

Now select the move tool again and hit Select->Inverse on the top menu

Now select the magnifying glass and right click. Select the option that says actual pixels. I can now move my tool bar back to the left and select the move tool again. You should look like this

Now go to the top menu and hit Filter->Blur->Motion Blur

I chose a angle of 18 degrees and a speed of 10 pixels.

Now select the text tool on your tool bar and enter the text you want. I will enter this. And choose the font and size your want.

 

[civicsi94]

Now go to the top menu and select Layer->New->Layer

Now we will add a border so select your brush tool as shown here. I like have a 6pixel brush

Here is where I am talking about

I now go along all four corners and looks like this. And I am using white by the way.

This is where we use the layers box that you see in my bottom right hand corner. For that layer now hit the down arrow button on where you see Normal next to the opacity percentage. And select the one that says Overlay.

Now go the top menu and now select Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur

Here are my settings for this blur. I had a radius of 2.4 pixels

Now save your sig in the .psd format by going to the top menu and hitting File->Save As. Now name the file to your liking the .psd format should be there as a default.

That is only half the battle, we are almost done. The canvas is set, now we will add some animation using image ready.

Now go to File->Edit in ImageReady

 

[civicsi94]

You should get something like this

Now select the text layer where you typed in a name and click on the eye

You will see time in sec. under the picture in the frame window. Hit the small down arrow and select No Delay or 0 sec. same thing lol.

Now hit this button to add a frame.

After that go to the text layer again and hit where the eye ball was when u click on it. Now go to the opacity and hit the down arrow and reduce the percent to about 5%.

We will make the text slowly appear. Again the increments of frames determine the size of the sig, so be careful. I will kill two birds with one stone. I will show you a progressive appear and blinking technique. To get the progressive appear. Add another slide/frame by hitting the button again and go the opacity and increase the percentage by no more than 10% for each slide, for me anyways

Now hit the down arrow by sec. under the frame where you have your text at opacity 100%. And change the time to 2 sec. not .2 sec. if you get alittle confused. I also added another frame after that but change the sec. back to No Delay

Now we will make the text disappear with the blink technique. This is fairly a simple concept. You add another frame or start on the one you just changed and hit the eye on the text. Create another frame and hit the eye to make the text appear. Do this over about 4 time to get a nice effect but for us we will make it blink and disappear at the same time. So when you hit the eye to make the text appear, hit the down arrow on the opacity and decrease it. Again, 10 is a good increment. When you reach 0 or close to it. You are done. Like so.

 

[civicsi94]

You can now hit the play button to see how your sig turned out. If want to edit it, hit the stop button and add or take away stuff to you likings

Now you are done and have to save it. Hit File->Save Optimized As. And name the file and you are done. Congrats you did it!

 

[CrazyConscious]

Wow...Nice write up!

 

[95 R-81 Cx]

DAMN! Good write up it must have taken a while to take all those screens.

 

[civicsi94]

lol yeah but all good though. i like explaining to the tee cuz some tutorials i used to read took me a couple times to read be4 i understood it. lol this way for those who like pictures better its all good. thanks and hope this helps any and everyone who is interested or just starting with adobe photoshop.

 

[DJ 2501]

nice write up, thanks man

 

[goomer416]

deff sticky material!

 

[strykersd]

This is a really long shot since your screen name says you live in Maryland, but is this picture taken in San Diego? That looks like my work in the backround, Nordstrom's Fashion Valley. Yeah I sell womens shoes to buy car parts! Nice writeup.

 

[civicsi94]

not my car. lol used JDMASTER's car. my car is the 98 coupe in my avator.

 

[MiloReaper87]

this is outstanding!!!

 

[civicsi94]

This is a really long shot since your screen name says you live in Maryland, but is this picture taken in San Diego? That looks like my work in the backround, Nordstrom's Fashion Valley. Yeah I sell womens shoes to buy car parts! Nice writeup.

this is my car

 

[juicedz]

Nice job. I dont think I have the patience to do that. How long does it normally take anyways?

 

[93 red ls]

bump for the sig man!!!

 

[93reddelsol]

Not bad, I will never have to make a sig, so many people do it for fun/free now.

 

[civicsi94]

Nice job. I dont think I have the patience to do that. How long does it normally take anyways?

a reg. sig takes me about 15 min.s depends on if they send me pics or if i have to find some and what not. .gif sigs take some time. like almost 30min.s because i am a perfectionist lol

 

[S Q A D]

definitely awesome