Stars - None. This is the most basic sort of thing which usually takes less then five minutes to do.
Anyways, so this how to create a very basic signature in Paint. Why am I posting this if it's completely basic? Because I need a place to put random tutorials for the Graphics School and I doubt it'd be much appreciated if I was putting random 10 page long tutorials into my Homeroom thread, so therefore it's being stuck here.
Right. Sorry again for all the super wordy explainations.
FINAL PRODUCT
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STARTING OUT
Mkay, hopefully if you’re reading this you’ve already managed to locate the icon for MS Paint on your computer. If you haven’t, it’ll either be on the desktop or found under Programs>Accessories>Paint. So open up the program and be ready to begin.
Alright, so now you have this simple little program sitting in front of you with all sorts of little buttons on one side, a few standard menu options at the top, and an ugly set of preset colors along the bottom. By now most people are thinking “How on earth can I make anything with this?” Luckily, Paint is much more flexible then it first appears to be and has many, many features that most people don’t think to search for.
So if you’re reading this then hopefully you’re just staring almost cluelessly a blank canvas and trying to understand.
Well, here’s a nice and easy way to start out with making a signature.
Okay, time to start.
If you like spriting and drawing free-hand, start trying. Of course, with the way Paint works, it tends to take forever to draw things by hand. Therefore, for the purpose of keeping this nice and simple, we’ll start with a picture from either a folder or from online.
If you’re starting from a folder, click Edit>Paste From… and then choose your file.
If you choose a picture from online, copy the image and then hit Edit>Paste.
By now you hopefully have figured out which version of Paint you have. If you’re lucky enough to have an ancient version of Paint (like might be found on Windows 98) then when you paste in anything it’ll probably ask “The picture is larger then the current canvas size. Shall we make change the canvas size to fit the picture?” or something like that. If not, then the program will automatically make the canvas to fit the picture. Either way, just allow the program to make a larger space.
^ It should look something like that by now. If you’ve already upgraded to the wretched Vista program, it’ll be shinier. All options should still be the same though, even if it looks alittle bit different.
Anyways. Now, if you still have the image selected (meaning there’s a dashed line along the edge) then good for you. If you clicked away from the image and deselected it, then look for the Select Tool. It’ll look like a square with a dashed outline. Click the select tool. Then click and drag the tool so that the box it forms goes all the way around the picture. Or, if the picture happens to be too large to be easily selected like that, on the keyboard hit Ctrl+A to select all.
Now you should have the picture selected. Picture in your mind the maximum signature size at ZU. 400x150 pixels, unless they’ve changed it again. Now look at your picture and use your best judgment. If you were to take the part of the picture you wanted and turn it into a signature as it is now, would it look good? Would it work at all? Chances are that the picture will be too large.
^ See? The picture simply won’t work at that current size. Therefore we need to change the size of the picture so that it’ll fit nicely into a signature. If the picture appears to be a good size already, then leave it as is for now.
RESIZING AN IMAGE
Now you should still have a nice large image. Or you should be skipping this section if your image is already a nice size.
Hopefully you’re image is still selected, despite the fact that I keep blabbering on and on about whatever other stuff. If it isn’t, then reselect the image. Next, make sure you’re on the “Select” tool, the one that looks like a box with a dashed outline. Right click on the picture. Then go down to Stretch/Skew… and click it.
^ A window similar to that should pop up. There are four blanks in the window. Leave the two blanks for Skew alone. Now that you’re ignoring the bottom half of the window, you have two blanks to mess with under the Stretch category. If you enter a number that’s less then 100, then the picture will become smaller. If the number you enter is over 100, the picture will be larger. Making pictures larger makes them look extremely pixilated, so therefore it’s usually best to either keep the image small. In other words, trying to make a small image big makes it look blocky. Therefore it’s better to shrink the image. When shrinking an image, make sure you keep the numbers for Horizontal and Vertical equal.
CLICKY CLICK CLICK CLICK! (Stupid 10 picture limits)
^ That’s what happens when the numbers are uneven. That’s also why it’s not a good idea to just grab a corner of the image and pull. The proportions of the picture get messed up that way.
Also, I’m sure you’ll find pretty quickly that a picture can’t be shrunken too much and then made larger again through the resize feature. If you get the sizes messed up or the picture gets to small, the best thing to do is usually to just delete the image, paste in a new copy, and start again. Do that until the image is a good size and still looks neat and tidy.
Anyways, you should have a now well sized image infront of you.
CUTTING DOWN ON SIZES
Now the picture is a good size, hopefully. The next step is to figure out how big you want the final product to be. For these forums the maximum signature size is 400 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall. For an avatar the maximum size is 130 pixels wide and 100 tall. Because it would be repetitive to type out instructions for cutting out a piece for an avatar and for a signature, just know that they both include the same basic steps right now.
There are three basic ways to crop an image.
1. Have an older version of Paint. Set the size to be whatever size the final will be, and then paste in the image. Then tell it not to resize when you paste the picture. Of course, that only works if you have a good version of Paint.
2. This is the way that’s harder to do. It basically involves using the select tool to move the picture to the top corner of the square and then drag the corner of the canvas to a good size. That way gives less freedom with what exactly is selected. It’s not the best method to use.
3. This is the best way to crop a picture. Find the Rectangle Tool and click it. Then, drag the corner of the canvas (the white part of the window) out alittle ways. The one advantage Paint has over Photoshop is the simplicity of resizing the canvas. So pull the canvas out alittle bit so that there’s more emptiness to work with.
Now, look towards the bottom right corner of the window. As you move the cursor over the canvas you should see a set of coordinates telling you which pixel you’re on. Now, in the big white space with the rectangle tool, click and hold down the right mouse button. Start to drag it across the screen. After you’ve moved it to about the size you want, continue holding down the button. Look back to the corner where the coordinates were earlier. Next to that you should see the dimensions of what’s about to be a rectangle. Use those numbers as a guide as you continue to drag the corner. When you’re making this box, make it three pixels bigger on each side then you want the final size to be. For example, if the ending size will be 400x150, make the box be 403x153 instead. Why? Because I said so.
Now, pick some random annoyingly bright and contrasting preset color off the color palette and left click it. Select the Fill With Color (Paint Can tool) and color in the middle of the box you just made.
^ That’s where you should be now. An annoying color in a box on one side and the picture on the other.
Now, right click that same annoying preset color. Then, select the select tool. Click and drag around the box. Leave so white around the edges. Then, look under the tool bar. You should see two options. Select the second one, which basically makes the background color invisible. When you click that the annoying color in the middle of your box should disappear. Now, click somewhere in the selected area and drag it over the picture. As you drag it about, you’ll see an exact preview of what the signature will look like, which is the reason that this is usually the better way to work. Anyways, drag the box around until you see exactly what you want the end to be. When you find the perfect spot, click away to drop the box there. If you happen to accidentally click away, press Ctrl+Z to undo the last step. Be careful though, because Paint’s memory is very short which means only three things can be undone in a row.
So drop the box in a good spot.
^ That’s the spot I’ve picked. Depending on the order you do your steps in, sometimes you’ll get an ugly color box where you moved the selection away from. Of course, that actually happens everytime. When you first slide the picture over is when they make the new background behind where the selection used to be, and that’s the reasoning behind the box. Of course, it doesn’t matter at all that that’s there because the white part doesn’t matter. Therefore just leave the ugly box there if it appears.
Now, still using the Select tool, select around the box. That’s the reason for leaving white. Slide the picture all the way towards the edge. Slide the picture so that the edge from the black box against the picture goes off the screen on the top and left sides of it. Then, go down to the corner of the canvas and click and drag it up towards the picture, making the canvas size smaller.
Leave some room. It’s hard on the eyes to cut stuff that’s set to actual size. Now, there are two options. The easiest way to cut the rest of the white is to remember the size you wanted when you had drawn the rectangle earlier. If that number escapes you, then click Image>Attributes and set the two blanks to the wanted size.
^ Now it’ll look something like that. The picture is now sized down to be used as a base for a signature. Of course, currently it’s nothing more then a picture that happens to be sized to 300x100 or so.
Because all it is now is a nice resized picture, it’s time to add a simple border.
BORDERS
Time to add a border to what you have right now. There’s many, many, many ways to do borders. The most common style is a one or two pixel black border at ZU, but common is boring. Therefore, click an annoying bright color along the bottom. Then click Colors>Edit Colors… and use the color chooser that comes up to pick a color that fits well with the colors in the picture. For the picture I’ve chosen a dark red would probably look nice.
So, choose your color and click okay. The reason for picking an ugly bright color first is that the color you’re on when you click Edit Colors is replaced by the new color on the toolbar, and some of the colors on the toolbar are used more often then others. So you have your color. Now, click the Magnifier (Zoom) tool. Zoom in however far you find easiest. Of course, the more zoomed the image gets, the easier it is on the eyes. Then, take the Line tool. In the corner you choose to start at, click and hold the left mouse button and drag the mouse over to another corner. It should leave a line of your color as you go. Before you set down the line, make sure it’s straight. If it ends up being crooked then just click Ctrl+Z to undo the little mistake and redraw the line. That’ll get you the simplest border possible.
Of course, simple is boring. Why have a boring straight border when you can take it and do something fun instead? For a more interesting border, don’t draw anything on the signature base yet. Instead, make the window larger again. Copy the base and paste it into the empty work space. Experiment on the copy version with drawing all sorts of fun borders with random colors and leave the original alone. Because Paint only undoes steps to a certain point, it’s never a good idea to work on the original base for the signature. Always copy and paste so that when a mistake is made you don’t have to start all over again. For this, it’s a very simple concept so it doesn’t matter much, but it’s a good idea to start working on remembering little hints like that now rather then mess up something later. Anyways, after copying the image go ahead and play around with colors and borders till you’re happy with the result.
^ There are two different versions with two different borders. One’s a standard boring border, and the other is little bit more complex.
Anyways, there’s many wonderful ways to do borders and lots of styles to adventure and explore with. Now it’s has a border, and that’s good, but it looks fairly boring and plain, so now it’s time to add font.
FONT
Font. Font is fun. Font goes with text, and text can make a sig look like more. Text can also be annoying and hard to place. When placing font, one of the things you don’t want to do is slap the text straight through the middle of the signature, or at least that’s how it is for most things. Every once in a while, text looks best in the direct middle of a signature. Most of the time text looks better towards the edge and out of the way. Mostly it has to do with focus and placement of the picture.
So, click the Text tool. Then click and drag around where you want the text. A font box should appear. If the box you make for font has a solid fill to it, look under the toolbar and make sure that it’s set to the option that makes the background invisible. Then type what you want. A Text Toolbar should have popped up when you click to make a box for font. If it didn’t, right click in the text box and go down to “Text Toolbar” to make it appear. The text toolbar has all the font options. Font type, font size, bold, italics, underlined, and whatever else can be changed using it. Color can be changed the way it always is.
When placing text, it can be annoying to try to change the size of the text box because the box never gets smaller then the size it starts at. If this happens, drag the corners of the textbox to make it larger. Move to the front of the line of text and hit enter. Then take the corner of the box and move it back down. The font should be easier to place. So, place the font, and you have a simple and fairly basic signature.
^ Voila.
Whoo, more random paint tutorials coming eventually. Is there anything that I might have possibly left being unclear at all? Any comments? Criticism?