Adding Signatures

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Images for cards or prints

How to take photos: Adding a signature

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Basic gear you need:

A felt marker, scanner, PhotoShop, and a photo

The Aim:

To personalise a photo in your own handwritten-style (see right)
Make it difficult for others to copy and illegally use your photo
Also, to make birthday, Christmas and Easter Cards, New Year cards, posters, anything

How:

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	1. Make sure that the new file settings are set for a 'Transparent Background', otherwise you'll have difficulties later.
	2. Use a pure white, clean piece of paper, and a large, dark, soft, round, tipped marker.
	3. For e-mailing size (500 pixels for the longest dimension) this size if fine. For printing your photos at full size, you'll need to double or triple this size.
	4. Do some variations and see which you like the best.
	5. Place it on a clean scanner, and close the lid
	6. In PhotoShop, go to 'File', 'Import', and your scanner
	7. A dialogue box should appear; yours will look different to this. But you should be able to set it to greyscale, and to at least 150dpi (dots per inch) for a good resolution
	8. Use the 'Crop Tool' to cut it out
	9. We need to increase the contrast to make 'selecting' it easier. Go to 'Image', 'Adjust', and 'Brightness / Contrast'. Move the Contrast slider to make the blacks really black, and white really white.
	10. Yours should now appear really contrasty like this. There may be some black specks of dust, erase those, or paint white over them, now.
	11. To 'Select' it, use the 'Magic Wand Tool', and click on the white areas. You'll see the areas selected by where the marching ants are. Make sure there aren't any gaps in the selection, and select inside of the o's, a's, p's, 0's etc. Then, press 'Delete' on your keyboard. > See 'Tips' for some help >
	12. If you did have a transparent background, then it should appear with a grey-white checkered pattern background. Now, go to 'Image', 'Adjust', and 'Invert' to flip the colours from black to white. > See 'Tips' for some help >
	13. Remember to save your work, and give it a memorable, and easy to find file name, but as a PhotoShop Document (.psd).
	14. Now, it appears a little flat, and so I like to have it stand out a bit. So, let's put a little shadow behind it. Go to the bottom right corner of PhotoShop. Click on 'Add layer style' to bring up this menu. Click on 'Drop Shadow'
	15. If you're happy with the direction of light, as shown by the line in the circle, then click 'OK'
	16. So, this is how it looks now, but on a transparent background.
	17. Use the 'Move Tool' to pick up and drop your signature into an open photo.
	18. It looks too big. Go to 'Edit', 'Transform', and 'Scale' to rescale it.
	19. You'll see little boxes around it. Hold the left mouse button down on one corner and move it in closer to the opposite corner. You'll notice that you can skew it. I always hold 'Shift' on my keyboard, to keep the dimensions natural. You can press the 'X' to cancel the scaling, and try again.
	20. Out of habit, I click on the 'Move Tool' once I'm finished, then 'Apply'. Whilst the 'Move Tool' is selected, I use it to adjust the positioning just a bit more. I could even use the arrows on the keyboard for finer positioning.
	21. And here it is, done. I've also added a text layer using the text tool, and again a Drop Shadow.
	The full final product.