JTF-2 Posted April 21, 2006 Share Posted April 21, 2006 I don't change my sig often, I've had this one for maybe a year now. The one before for a year also. Only ever about 3/4 in total. I've had the same avatar since i joined 4 years ago. I want my new sig to be more military. With GRAW comming soon and everything, it feels like the right time to make the change. Old one is still in my sig, new one is here: Suggestions? style ideas? how does the "forum green" colour on the far right of my sig blend with the forum colour on your monitors? thanks guys, -matt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swartsz Posted April 21, 2006 Share Posted April 21, 2006 i think it looks great! the "forum green" looks like a complete match on my monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squad_e Posted April 21, 2006 Share Posted April 21, 2006 wow .. Really effective... yep teh forum green, is a green light on my pc lol.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the.ronin Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 ← That's tight!! Only suggestion I would have is to do a slight motion blur on the dude. Then overlay a crisp version of the dude over that. Only other thing I would recommend is making the font more crisp too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeko Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 I like it! The only thing i would fix is that i would lighten the dude a bit. Good job! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 22, 2006 Author Share Posted April 22, 2006 glad you guys like it. good to know the green works (thanks Swartsz and Squad_e) @the.(uncle).ronin: thought about that one too mate, with the blur. I'll whip up a version and see what you think. @Zeko: that's been my biggest problem. Making the guy less covered in shadow. I pretty much painted the left side of his face (in the goggles) and messed around with the colour ballance. There's just not very much detail in the source image. too dark. I'll see what If there's anything else I can do. More questions: Ronin, you mentioned make the text sharper, but the problem is that jpg's aren't good with hard lines like that. I tried .gif and it looks really nice, i can even use transparency instead of colour matching for the "forum green," BUT, it the guys face looks too obviously dithered. Anybody know a "best of both worlds" sollution? Maybe I could import to illustrator and use that to do the text, instead of Photoshop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeko Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 Save it as *.png. U'll get quality transparent image. About dude, make new layer, change layer blending to soft light, pick a soft brush with white color, change brush opacity to 50-60% and start painting on dark spots. Should end up good i think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 22, 2006 Author Share Posted April 22, 2006 I tried to incorporate all of your suggestions. Here's the new one, What do ya think? Slow is Smooth, and Smooth is Fast for reference, here's the old version: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squad_e Posted April 22, 2006 Share Posted April 22, 2006 I dont see much difference.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 22, 2006 Author Share Posted April 22, 2006 (edited) heh, ya, i know. Details. Painted detail onto the guys vest (left side, shoulder), painted in more of his face (cheek), added subtle motion blur, painted in some highlights of butstock of the m4. Less shadow on the helmet and another hole on its top. Like I said, Details. But it's what make a good design great. Also, the image in a .PNG now, so you're seeing transparency, not look-alike green. PS: That's a sweet sig you got there. Nice tag! Edited April 22, 2006 by JTF-2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeko Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 Looks great now IMHO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 Thanks Z. that'll be the final product then. thanks for the suggestions/encouragment everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brettzies Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 I like it. Hoot from BHD? I have no idea what your old one looks like, but this is cool. Only two things I don't like, but it does look good overall. The grey bar. I like the idea behind it, but it doesn't tie into your image at all. It's too light and kind of sticks out. Try picking one of the shades from your image and changing it to that. The other thing is the quote. Looks too big, it overpowers your nice image. You end up looking at the text first and not your image. It should be the other way around, or balanced. I guess it's html text? I would make it all caps and smaller. Either center it in the width of your image or justify to the entire length. Here's an example of what I'm talking about(hope you don't mind): or this: Really though I like your sig, and I'm not a big fan of these sig things to begin with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 Excellent suggestions! and thank you for the compliments/help. I do really like the version you did. Yes, Hoot from BHD. I just liked the image. It had the right feeling. But I'm bound by a few practical constraints. Overall size: it's already a little too tall, width is well bellow limit though. I wanted to add the text to the image as you've done, but it would make the image too high in relation to it's width for forum regs. I could scale it, but it would make the white text un-readable. I'm a little confused as to what you mean by the "grey bar"? there's a deep red bar, the one with the white text in it? is that what you're talking about? I tried using a "GRAW green" colour as well as some of the greens and beiges from the image, bit they weren't as eye catching.... Kinda stuck. I'll play around with it some, and see what sollutions I can come up with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brettzies Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 I'm a little confused as to what you mean by the "grey bar"? there's a deep red bar, the one with the white text in it? is that what you're talking about? I tried using a "GRAW green" colour as well as some of the greens and beiges from the image, bit they weren't as eye catching.... ← Hmm, I'm not sure. In my browser the red bar goes over the image to right and crosses a vertical grey bar. Is it suppose to be transparent and blend into the forum bg color? Kind of like the one you posted that says "for refrence, here's the old version:" That's why I suggested making it a different color or blending it in with the image. Maybe I'm not suppose to be seeing it all together...but I do. I'm on internet explorer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 (edited) I'm a little confused as to what you mean by the "grey bar"? there's a deep red bar, the one with the white text in it? is that what you're talking about? I tried using a "GRAW green" colour as well as some of the greens and beiges from the image, bit they weren't as eye catching.... ← Hmm, I'm not sure. In my browser the red bar goes over the image to right and crosses a vertical grey bar. Is it suppose to be transparent and blend into the forum bg color? Kind of like the one you posted that says "for refrence, here's the old version:" That's why I suggested making it a different color or blending it in with the image. Maybe I'm not suppose to be seeing it all together...but I do. I'm on internet explorer. ← hmmm, very odd. It should be transparent. I don't see a grey bar. In the .png format, it allows for transparency. Maybe IE doesn't support it? that would be a problem. I just checked firefox, the transparency works there. It works in Camino too, so I'll assume it'll work in Safari. Anybody else see the "grey bar" where the transparency is supposed to be? here's a new version, which do you guys like better? Edited April 23, 2006 by JTF-2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeko Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 Yeah thats IE problem. Unable to show png's properly. IE is dead anyway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brettzies Posted April 23, 2006 Share Posted April 23, 2006 In that case, I'd stick with your old/current version. Looks like you shrunk the text anyway, which is better. That's another problem with different browsers, they all handle text size a little differently. I would still make it smaller, but now I don't know what it looks like on your end so it's hard to say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 23, 2006 Author Share Posted April 23, 2006 silly IE. Browser standards are good! ok, well, i think i'll stick with what i've got for now. The version with the fade is a little too busy. Thanks guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NYR_32 Posted April 24, 2006 Share Posted April 24, 2006 Looks cool, only problem is it is taller than the forum limit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 24, 2006 Author Share Posted April 24, 2006 good eye. changed now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BornToKill Posted April 24, 2006 Share Posted April 24, 2006 IE does support PNG transparency via directX. You would need to apply the DX filter using the 'style' attribute of the IMG tag as well as a browser detection script so that it only applies to those using IE or it'll crash other browsers. This is down to the fact that when IE 5.0 was launched microsoft were pushing their directX filters as a standard, but no-one else took it up, but went native.. Microsoft lost yet another bid to lead the pack. IE7 has native PNG transparency support, same as mozilla firefox. This forum doesn't support the PNG hack required on older IE versions.. hence alpha pixels are displayed as grey. Like the sig btw, but think it would look better with the text underneath personally.. You'll be better of 'faking' the transparency by giving your sig the green background of he forums. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the.ronin Posted April 24, 2006 Share Posted April 24, 2006 This forum doesn't support the PNG hack required on older IE versions.. hence alpha pixels are displayed as grey. I could have sworn I posted a png and the transparency came through on these forums ... I'll try to do a test later. Like the sig btw, but think it would look better with the text underneath personally.. I actually liked it better withou the added text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTF-2 Posted April 24, 2006 Author Share Posted April 24, 2006 (edited) I think i'll stick to the .png for now. maybe it'll help convince IE users to switch to a modern browser... Roinin, you liked it better with the text not in the sig image and as HTML underneath? I dunno, i was debating that too, I'll leave it the way it is for now, and if i get sick of the stupid quote, then i'll change it. Edited April 24, 2006 by JTF-2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brettzies Posted April 24, 2006 Share Posted April 24, 2006 Roinin, you liked it better with the text not in the sig image and as HTML underneath? I dunno, i was debating that too, I'll leave it the way it is for now, and if i get sick of the stupid quote, then i'll change it. ← LOL. You've been going round and round with this. I like it better underneath as well. Here's why. Your new width(grey for me), is actually nicely balanced with the image. However, the quote itself just isn't very readable or appealing to look at. I think it just detracts from your image. Western culture the eye goes top left to bottom right first. Not to say you can't put thing where ever you want, but in this case it feels kind of tacked on. You're also having to read it one word at a time from top to bottom. In which case it almost becomes type as an image. Which can also be good, but again it feels like an after thought, like you're trying to find a place for it. You have to decide if it's the most important part of your image or just an extra, and how readable you want it to be. It is a hard thing to balance within the confines of the sig limits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.