Hi friends, today I'll be making a signature like my dear friend Bob Ross. I can only decide to make a signature like him through this, as making signatures and posting them as images has gotten to the point where it is too unreliable for the monetary compensation, and the arbitration process just isn't worth trying to deal with. Why should I spend two hours making a signature, to have someone make the same amount of money in 20 minutes? So, if you'll bear with me, I will walk you through the process of making a signature like my good friend Bob Ross.

So welcome friends to the first Joy of Sig Making episode. I’d like to invite all of you to get your photo editing programs and make sigs along with me. Thank you for tuning in to the show today. We’ll use a couple different tools, programs, and styles, and each episode I’ll teach you how to add different effects onto the canvas. So let’s get started


First, open up any graphics program you’d like. While your doing that I’ll tell you about what I’ll be using today. Starting off I’ll be using a 400x200 pixel white canvas to start, with a resolution of 72 pixels per inch, and RGB colour. But you can use whatever size or resolution you’d like. I personally like to use 400x200 because I find it to be a relatively standard canvas size, that has enough room but not too much room. Some other people like to use 400x150, so I would recommend making a sig or two in each size, and see what you prefer.

One thing that I’ve done is grab Topaz Labs, specifically Topaz Adjust 5. There is a 30 day free trial, after which you have to pay, but there are ways to get it for free permanently that I will not go into . Topaz Adjust, and the other Topaz programs allow us to add some effects easily into your signature, makes your whole sig making life a lot easier.

Another resource to make your sig making life easier is the site hockey pngs, it contains transparent png cuts of most NHL players which will also make your life easier. Of course, you can always cut out players yourself.


Let’s start making the actual signature now. I thought today we’ll just do a simple little sig that I hope you’ll enjoy. Let’s start by finding a good background to base the sig off on. I’ve downloaded gorlab’s stock pack, but there are some other stock packs out there that you may want to download. To start off I’m going to look around the stock pack for something that I like, and has a theme for the sig. If you can’t find anything that suits you, feel free to browse google for some happy little stock backgrounds.

Now I’ve found a background that I quite like, so we’ll take this background and just put it on the canvas, nice and easy. This is a nice simple and high definition background that we can do anything we want with, especially with a tool as great as photoshop.



- Normal background

Here’s the background I used. It wasn’t in a stock pack, so I just did a happy google search and found it. Now, to place it on the background we’ll want to go to file, then place embedded, and then choose the background. Once it’s on the canvas, I like to resize it and move it around. In this case I’ve moved it down and enlarged it so that we have more cyan blue sky to work with.


- In Photoshop

Now when working in photoshop, I like to zoom in so we can work with those fine little details a little easier, but if you would rather keep it at a normal zoom, or zoomed out it’s completely your choice, whatever makes you happy is what you should do. You can zoom in by pressing CTRL and +, and zoom out by pressing CTRL and -.

Next thing we need is a render. So we’ll head over to hockeypngs and look around for something that suites our needs. For renders, I like to use ones that aren’t really action shots, but more so standing still shots. I just think it looks better, but as always you can use whatever you want to use, it’s your sig. To find renders, I just click on different players and see what catches my eye. Once you’ve found a render, in this case Larkin, make sure you click on the image so it pulls it up in a new tab. Then save the image, and go back to place it embedded in photoshop.

There are other ways to get renders as well, but are a little more time consuming. You can take the pen tool, or the quick selection tool and outline the render, then you click refine edge at the top, make sure everything looks nice, and then output to new layer. Delete the old layer, then with the render layer selected, you can go to edit and free transform to position it.

A nice little tip is that you can hold SHIFT while scaling the selection to keep it proportionate.

Now I’ve taken the render and placed it on the right hand side of the image, because I like having the chest/render facing into the middle of the sig. You can also have the render in the middle of the sig, there’s no wrong way to do anything.
We’ll then use Topaz Labs and some of the effects it has to offer. Select the background layer and go to filter at the top and select Topaz Adjust 5. Friends, note that you need to have Topaz Labs installed to use this tool. I like to just cycle through each one, seeing what it will look like, and see if anything catches my eye. There’s some nice ones like Autumn, sketch, high contrast, dramatic, clarity, and plenty other ones. This time I’ve found Portrait Drama, which is what I’m looking for. If you don’t have Topaz, you can adjust levels, contrast, brightness, and curves to get these effects. In the top left there are different collections, so if you aren’t seeing some of the options I’m seeing, it’s probably because I’m viewing a different collection. But now that I’ve found a nice preset, I can edit some of the things on the right side like exposure, regions, contrast, brightness, highlights, shadows, and the curves of the filter. So you can play with those to your liking, but I’m going to keep them at the default because I quite like it.


Next thing we’ll do is adjusting curves on the background to further get a nice effect. Select the background layer and above it choose the curves, which is the middle of the top row. You can just drag the line around, and I don’t really know what dragging it where does, but it seems generally if you go up the image gets brighter, and if you go down it gets darker. So because I want to darken some stuff, im just going to drag it a little down, and I’ve gotten the effect I wanted.


- What the curves looks like

Next we’ll do the same thing with the render. Select the render layer and once again head to topaz labs. Once again clicking through I found another one I like called clarity which like the background added a lot of crispness and brought out shadows which fits in.


-How the sig looks at this point

Next we’ll also work with curves on the render. I don’t want to do too much, except bring out some more colour, so I just played with the slider again and got something I quite liked. Now, you may have a problem with this curve layer affecting everything below it, and not just the render like we want. To fix this we’ll want to clip the curves to the layer below it, so in the edit curves screen you’ll want to click the little button with the box and arrow pointing downwards at the bottom.


- Curves and button.

Next we’ll want to add some stocks and lighting, but first we’ll start with the stocks. To find stocks you can either google, or download a stockpack that are available on the site in the graphics resource schedule. But I’m just going to look around for a stock that I like. I found a nice dot texture that could work, and I have an idea with it, but first we need to place it onto the canvas. You’ll want to place embedded as always, but change the blend type to screen. To do this look above the layers, and right next to opacity, but under the adjustments it will say normal. Click on the normal and it’ll open a dropdown menu where you should select screen. I’ve done this in this case to get rid of the ugly black, so that it becomes transparent and is nice to look at. Depending on what you’ve done, there may be a bit of an outline of the stock because of the blend mode. To get rid of this, take the magic eraser tool, and just click on the outline to get rid of it.

Now, following my original idea that came with the stock, we’ll want to select the clouds and put them on their own layer. Select the background layer and take the quick select tool. I’m using a size of 14 on the tool, with auto enhance on, and sample all layers off. Once I have the clouds selected, I’m going to refine edge and put them on their on layer that is above the dots. I’ve also moved the dot layer to be below the render layer, so that they are in the background and the render stays the main focus of the signature. Make sure to turn off the visibility of the render layer when doing this. Once I’ve clicked refine edge, at the bottom I’m going to change the Output To: to new layer. Move the new layer so that it’s above the stock layer. Now, you’ll notice that the clouds lose the curves effect, so I’ve also moved the curves layer above that, but still below the render.






I also just got another idea, and that is to take the clouds and mirror them at the top of the image. To do this we’ll first want to take the crop tool and crop the image. We’re cropping the image because we originally had moved around the background so part of it is on the canvas, and to duplicate the clouds we’ll need to select only the visible part. So grab your crop tool, have only the canvas highlighted, and press enter. Next we’ll want to hide the render layer, and then take the quick select tool. I’m using a brush of 30, but it doesn’t really matter for this. Select the bottom clouds, go to refine edge, then output it to a new layer. Highlight the new layer and then go to edit and free transform. Because I don’t want it to look like an exact mirror, I’ve zoomed in and moved the clouds a bit around.

At this point I asked my friend gorlab for some advice, and he said to enlarge the render and cut a bit of the helmet off for the framing, so that’s what I’m going to do next. Highlight the render layer and go to free transform. Hold shift while scaling it, and I moved the render over to the right a bit. Sizing wise I enlarged it until the “Bauer” was cut off of the helmet.

For some reason the topaz filter disappeared, so we’ll just fix that by reapplying it nice and easy.



Next thing, and probably the final and hardest thing to do is text. I’ll be making this sig for new chicago draftee Ryan Shepard. I think with text there is no secret formula or trick to making it look god, most of it is just nice and easy experimentation friends. At first I was thinking a font that was cloudy, but when moving it around and experimenting with it I didn’t find anything I liked, but I did find 2 different fonts I liked so I played with them nicely and after asking some people their thoughts I found something I enjoyed. A small little cursive for the ryan, then right under it in big blue thick strokes the Shepard. So now we’re done the signature!




It was fun creating a signature, and I hope you tune in next, see you later friends, and as always, remember there’s no mistakes, but just happy little accidents that you can ctrl z.

Now to end with a paragraph on my friend Naosu aka Ryan Shepard, and why I made this sig for him.

Naosu is a cool dude, good pick at 5 or whatever pick chicago had since he fell. He’s been active in the LR, and also bullies me for being a challenger tier player stuck in silver in league of legends. His player is a center on the Kelowna Knights who’s an elite passer and skater. He also cares a lot about his render being Palmieri, so I had to make some edits to the sig.

The new version: