signatures on finished renders
Sfariah D
Posts: 26,259
I know some people put their signatures on their finished renders. if that is you, this topic is for you.
How do you make your signature? Why do you choose what you use?
Also something is bugging me. How do you know when your render is finished so you can move on to the next project?
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Comments
I use Pixelmator for post work and to add signature. It is unfortunately Mac only, but has many of the capabilities of Photoshop for much less cost, and is for me easier and cleaner to use than GIMP.
Always very hard to know when something is "done". Sometimes I keep making changes even after I think it was finished, sometimes I look at the last one and decide I don't like it anymore and go back to an earlier version. I like to keep multiple versions of things, and flip back and forth to try to decide which I like best.
I have different levels of "done." My overall rule of thumb though, is if working on a complicated scene, I "finish" it then walk away for a few hours, go do other things, then look at it again. Gives me a fresh perspective. I hardly ever use that little test render square, I usually fully render while the work is in progress. That test render thing just isn't close enough to the real thing for me.
For signature I just use Corel Photo Paint because I like the different font options. You can also rotate the signature easily if you want to. :)
i use an old version of photoshop elements(4) for siggies and framing. and the occasional auto contrast.
hmmm. i guess a render is done when you're bored with it.
I rarely place a signature on an image, usually only when commercial and required, otherwise, I leave it off. Seems kinda self serving to me and can detract from the image IMO.. I have a signature saved on a PSD file and just place it on a new layer when needed and then play with the layer effects if needed..
Add your signature to one of the figure's texture files like a tattoo:3
Pretty much any graphics app that supports layers will do a signature for you. There are also various watermark apps like Photowatermark (pro and standard) that will create watermarks or signatures that you can batch apply.
There is not right or wrong answer on when a render is done or not done. Only you can know that. Or the client will decide. Any renders that go to the "final" stage are completed and saved. Final renders are let "rest" for at least a day before being reviewed. You'd be surprised what a pair of fresh eyes picks up that you might miss.
At the very least, once it's done, save it and work on something else for a couple of days. Get it off your mind. Then take a look at it as if you were looking at another person's work.
...I used Gimp and saved the signature as a layer against a transparent background. I then adjust the colour of he signature to match the overall colour balance of the image so it's subtle yet still there.
I use Photoshop and save mine on a transparent background as well, but what I actually save is a selection to the alpha channel. That way I can easily update the selection's date each year. All I need to do is load the selection from the alpha channel, add a new layer, fill the selection with any color of my choosing depending on the scene, background, general color scheme, and drag it to a new layer on the render image.
If you use photoshop, create your signature on a transparent background and then save it as a brush preset. Then, when you do want to sign something, just use that. When you save it as a brush preset, you can always modify the size or color to whatever works best. I don't know if you can do that in Photoshop Elements, but if you can, its a quick five minute job for something simple.
Greetings,
I use Pixelmator (awesome program, and super-inexpensive for such a great tool!), create a new text layer, using Overlay blending and ~50% opacity. (I vary the opacity depending on what it's going over on the scene.) It makes for a very subdued signature/watermark. I specifically place it someplace where it is (1) not obtrusive to the image, and yet (2) not trivially removable without cutting something important from the scene. If there is a surface I want to align it to, I use Transform, convert to pixels, and skew as necessary it so it looks like it's stamped on that surface. (This works for things like the sides of curbs or buildings, lapels of jackets, etc.)
Using Overlay makes the text blend reasonably well with the image, and opacity makes it less overt.
I know when an image is done enough when I'm proud enough of it that I want to show it to others. Usually it's pretty simple: if I find myself doing postwork on an image, I care enough about it to put a signature on it, and I'll probably share it afterwards. If I'm just putting up a WIP, a tech demo, a squee ('Look how cool this is!'), or something like that, and I don't care to postwork it, I won't 'sign' it. I also typically won't sign (or postwork, really) images that I do for friends where the subject matter is...not something I'd comfortably post on dA. :red:
I postwork almost everything I do that's reasonably decent quality (which is to say around 1 out of every 10 renders), at least to make the colors 'pop' a little more. When I started with DAZ Studio I didn't postwork anything, but eventually I remembered that almost every decent photograph I've ever taken was made better by a little bit of judicious postwork. If my photos were made better that way, there's no reason not to make my renders better the same way.
I hope that helps!
-- Morgan
...I wonder if PSP or Gimp will allow this.
...I wonder if PSP or Gimp will allow this.
Looks like Gimp does. http://m.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Own-Brush-in-GIMP
...cool that will make it a lot easier.
...I wonder if PSP or Gimp will allow this.
I haven't used Gimp since I got this laptop 2 1/2 yrs ago, so don't remember, but I'm sure you could make a brush in PSP out of a sig on a transparent background. I happen to know for a fact you can do the selection method I suggested above in PSP, because that's where I learned to do it years ago. :coolsmile:
OK, I see from Daikatana's post you can do a brush in Gimp as well.
For me, it's when the contest deadline is.
Honestly, perhaps I'm never done with some. I've revisited several of my renderings after the fact because every time I looked at them I kept staring at some problem or something I wanted to change, so when I got time I finally just changed it. I could probably keep working on some of them forever, but if I do, I'll never get anything else done. What was the quote, "At some point, you need to shoot the engineer and start production". :-)
A Render is finished when I get finished playing with it at that time, I then save the Scene file to play with again at a later time. So in my little world as long as I have the scene file it is never really finished. It is just finished for now.
As for Sig's on images I use a PNG type Stamp/Brush that works in most 2D Art programs. I use one that a good friend of mine designed for me, Thank you Spyro, it fit's me to a Tee if I do say so myself.
Sometimes I write it out myself with my tablet, and sometimes I choose a font that matches the theme of the render and use it instead. Just depends on what I feel like doing that day. I put the signature on it's own layer in the PSD so I can create sig-less versions if I need/want.
Oh definitely, and I put the DAZ Studio, Poser, Bryce, whatever render logo on a separate layer as well.