Some questions to the Greats

[In Tenebris]

Hi there!
I explored the site and found a lot of interesting tutorials for this great program!

Can you let me know some tricks, suggestions and hints for good wallpapers and signatures? I've found lots of tuts but they just don't get the point...
Right now I'm experimenting with patterns and some elements to give my art a professional looking, this is the same also for web graphic

Tnx

[tamlin]

Originally Posted by In Tenebris

Can you let me know some tricks, suggestions and hints for good wallpapers and signatures?

Are these for yourself, or for other people? If they are for you, the design is really down to whatever you like. A few very general tips would be:

Wallpapers: I don't use wallpapers myself, but if I did I'd want a very subtle design that makes a good unobtrusive background - if you're spending hours looking at a computer screen, you need something restful for your eyes.

Signatures: I hate those huge multicoloured sigs that take up half the screen. If you're making a sig in Photoshop I'd suggest making it a reasonable size, with a classy understated design, and use the Save for web... option to optimize the file before you upload it - some people are still on slow dial-up connections and there's nothing worse when you're trying to browse a forum than waiting for someone's big fat 300k sig to load.

Well, not sure if that's what you wanted, but just a few thoughts. Feel free to disagree entirely

PS: If you've got some designs done already, why not post them in the gallery? People are generally very keen to supply helpful comments and advice.

[In Tenebris]

Thank you so much for your suggestions, I 've the same opinion on Wallps and sigs
I do wallpapers for friends generally, and I try to accomplish their tastes, though I use dark or restful colors (black, dull blue ecc) most of the times.

A question: I use to put in (when the situation requires to) figures like anime charachters and so on, but usually I try to make them half-transparent or something this way, in order to make the wallp not intrusive for the desktop.
Shall I do the opposit, in order to enhance the image (as I can see in many wallpaper) ?

I've also posted a couple of works I did, My first wallpaper and one of my first layouts in the showroom forum.

[NEOD101]

Something that can make a wallpaper or whatever look interesting when adding characters is to paste them into a new layer and cycle through all the blending options for the layer(click inside the selection list then click on one and use the arrow keys to cycle through them). You can make some interesting stuff this way.

[In Tenebris]

Originally Posted by NEOD101

Something that can make a wallpaper or whatever look interesting when adding characters is to paste them into a new layer and cycle through all the blending options for the layer(click inside the selection list then click on one and use the arrow keys to cycle through them). You can make some interesting stuff this way.

Oh, yeah, I know. Also duplicate the figure layer, apply some filter like gaussian blur etc and experiment with blending options works great, but I'm more interested in hemmm.... background elements, stuff like this, you know ^_^ If you have some brilliant technique

[bedlam123]

Take a look at this site. The background elements are clearly visible, but are unobtrusive. The color is pleasing and easy on the eyes. Your question about background elements is so individual. I like having something in my wallp and backgrounds for my eye to focus on, sometimes it is small, other times not. You really need to just sit down and experiment and see what you like. Good luck, be sure to let us see your results.