Signature making tutorial

Hello,
I have seen a lot of people asking, how to do one. Here I will explain, what to use, how some things could be done better and then added to your own taste.

Programs to use:
GIMP, Photoshop (the major editing programs, so far the most popular)
Irfanview (I use it for rezising, previewing, re-saving, because these things are a bit more complicated (to me) in PS or GIMP).

Now, there are various signatures you can make - different shapes (100/500, 120/300 etc), different styles, different colors, different techniques (screened, stocks, photos, vector).

I am gonna tell the way I do (that is certainly not the only way and possibly not the rghtest way either), so every other signature maker can add their own tips and tricks (which I could add here later, adding their name too ).

Techniques:
Screenshots:
Ingame you can take very nice screenshots of the creation and of your own toon. Just press Prt Scr (which will take a picture with the whole interface, NOT GOOD for a sig or a wallpaper) OR press F9 which gives you the possibility to take a clear image.
The panel that pops up allows you to move around to different corners, zoom in and out (which allow you to take REAL close-ups - I have been using that a lot!), left and right, up and down, forward and back. Play around with it and soon you'll be able to gasp the most coolest screenshots you have ever seen
Also, for screenshots I would recommend to put the "textures" and "sharpness" (and in cases you wish, the other effects) on. On special occasions you might also want to put on the "clouds" (can get really cool stuff with that near buddha city) or "water" (miracellous things! even though you'r computer might get "Miracellous" on that too).
You will find all the screenshots you have made in the Perfect World folder in your Programs folder. You go on to "Element" and then "Screenshots" - feel free to cut them out from there to (where ever) My Pictures to have easier access.

Stocks and photos:
I have seen quite a few good ones around here with this technique, even tho I havent tried them myself. But there's allways some good (free) stock photos on the net or you can allways pick up the camera and make a few by yourself.
Let's say you take a graph of your wooden table - might be a perfect suit for the background of your sig!

Vector:
Vector is a technique to use in Photoshop or GIMP. Basically it means that you draw (or copy) the picture you use by yourself. If you have a good vision (and by that I mean a VERY good vision) of that you want to draw, you can just start placing the lines and filling the sections.
Otherwise you can have another layer you copy some other picture from. But in such case you will have to be a bit more experienced I guess - anyway, who's interested in that, here's a tutorial for vectoring:
How to vector a car

But Okay, enough of this talk, let's start doing a simple and a good looking sig (assuming you have Photoshop or GIMP (the latter, by the way, is freeware and you can download and use it for free!).

First of all you must have a picture you want to use for the signature. Let's say, it's a screenshot of your character's face. Just a plain one.
Now the thing you might have to do is to resize the image (never to a bigger one - the quality would get messed) and crop it. Since this part I usually do in Irfanview, I can't tell how to in other's.
So you have the angle and the perspectives you would want. Let's say we make the size 500 width and 100 heigth (it's like a standard, but feel free to change that).

Now if you want borders: In PS/GIMP press Ctrl+Shift+N to create a new layer - that allows you to draw stuff on the picture witout actually touching it. Let's say you want to make a colored border - just draw it.
You can add special effects to the border... In PS go to Layer > Layer Style > Opacity (Options or something) - there you will have to doubleclick on what you want to do with it - fill with gradient, bevel, emboss, drop shadow - play around and you'll see.
In GIMP you will have to select the drawn areas and add effects (there is a variety to do it - I don't know the names since my program, for some reason, is in Estonian).

How to write your name on it.
Take the writing tool, choose the color (see the top), the font, the size and weight and you're ready to write.
I would like to point out that it is actually possible to put the same effects on the writing now that we did with the border - very effective.

Besides these simple things there are other things to take cover. In GIMP there is an option named "Colorize" which will make your picture into one color (sometimes it looks pretty cool). I use it to change a color I dont like anymore tho.
And in both programs you have such things as Photo Filter and Curves - these too are for changing colors and color depths.

Also you might want to take a look at the special effects - personally I love to f*** up my images with Film Grain or stuff like that.

*Someone once gave me a tip to save the stuff in PNG format, becasuse JPG has a thing to mess the quality a but up.

*When you use GIMP as the program, at the beginning when you start the project, change the settings where you see there is 70 DPI - make it 300! That will have better quality.

Well since you have the programs and the basics now, feel free to play around with them and seek for more basic tutorials in the internet - that's how most of "us who do sigs" have done it in the irstplace, I guess : )