Well here's my 3rd tutorial, it took about a hour and a half to make and I hope it helps people out. I use this technique in a lot of my signatures.

Easy Full Signature

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a signature like this:




Resources used in this tutorial:
Dark Crystal Script Font
Rust and Grunge Brushes
Link Render


Brushing the background
1) Create a new canvas (I used 340x120)
2) Fill the background layer with black



3) Load your brushes
4) Set your foreground to white
5) Create a new layer (CTRL+Shift+N)
6) Brush the background white until it covers the whole canvas, just don't overlap to much



7) Create a new layer (CTRL+Shift+N)
8) Keep switching back and forth between black and white over the parts appropiate, (ex. if its to dark click once with white, if its to light click once with black over it)



9) Change the layer Fill Opacity
10) Merge the layers so its all in the background layer

Adding Color
11) Create a new layer (CTRL+Shift+N) and put it on top
12) Fill the layer with the color you want to use, I'm using #007236
13) Change the layer to Soft Light



14) Now to even out the signatures brightness and darkness out. If your signature is still really dark or really light in places, make a new layer (CTRL+Shift+N) above the background layer and repeat steps 8 and 9. Once you get it to look good, merge the layer down with the background.



15) You can merge all the layers now

Adding the render (Image)

16) Open the render you want in photoshop (You can find renders at http://www.planetrenders.net )
17) Drag the render onto the background you just made
18) Delete the background, preferbly using the magic wand tool

Before:



After:



19) Resize the render to the size you want by using Transform (CTRL+T) and drag the corners, press SHIFT while dragging to keep the image the same height and width

Modifying the render
20) Duplicate the render layer (CTRL+J)



21) With the bottom render layer selected, go to "Filter > Blur > Motion Blur" and put the settings at something around 36 for distance and you decide on the direction depending on where your render is. I used 29, click OK
22) Now some of the border may have been affected by the blur because all the background wasn't taken off, if so just delete the extra's

Before:



After:



23) Merge the 2 render layers (CTRL+E on the top render layer)
24) Change the render layer to Luminosity



25) If you need to move the render somewhere, do it now.
Note: You should have 2 layers now, 1 for the background and one for the render

Adding Text - Probaly the hardest part alone when making a singature
26) Select the text tool and click where you want your text to be, type in whatever you want
27) Edit the font and size for the text to whatever you want (I am using "Dark Crystal Script" and a font size of 32)



28) Double click the text layer to open the blending options setting
29) Here's the settings I used


Drop Shadow
Color Overlay
Stroke

30) Move the text if you don't like where it is

Adding a border
31) Reset the foreground and background (D)
32) Create a new layer (CTRL+Shift+N)
33) Press (CTRL+A)
34) Edit > Stroke, these settings

35) Same settings except a width of 2px and white as the color
36) Same settings except a width of 1px and black as the color
37) If you want, change the blending options to overlay or soft light (I left mine as normal for this one)

Saving
38) I'd save tfhe graphic as a PSD incase you need to change text or something
and / or
39) Save it as a .jpg and use the default Quality settings

Ending result:


This tutorial was made by Slay from A Knight's Tales ( http://www.aknightstales.com ) and you are allowed to repost as long as you give me credit.

If you used this tutorial, please post your results, I'd like to see if this tutorial was worth making and if it helped people.

Great tuorial man. The end result is really cool! I think i'm going to try that...

This tutorial is good for thous who want to make simple sigs but dont know how so nice job for the tutorial .. make them coming if it is alredy 3rd ..

maybe try adding some cooler and harder to make stuff so it aint so simple sig in the end ..

Done. (I skipped some commands, and did some of my own tricks, but technicaly I built on to your tutorial.)

nice work

@ Dawiss - Thanks, my intentions for this signature tutorial was for those people who are just starting out and hopefully this will also teach them some stuff about photoshop.

@ Adobemedia - Glad you decided to try out my tutorial and posted your result. It looks pretty good, what's all part of the render? Just the wing on the left?

@ tristan - Thanks for the compliment.

I really needed help on how to work with renders, thanks for this tutotial.
Nice job and keep up the good work, know nay tuts which would make me learn about blending renders with the background?

The tutorial is pretty good for learn how to work with renders, but i dont know how to apply the step #24, that thing of changing the layer to luminosity... can anyone tell me how to apply that thing? (yea im a newb)

Thanks, and for blending...I'm not really sure, try Fire Designs on Invisionfree...they have a lot of good tutorials.

And to answer your question MIGUE2k7, above the layers is the Blending options (Overlay, soft light, luminosity etc.) It's default setting is normal, just click on it and a drop-down should appear where you can select luminosity.