In this tutorial I will teach you how to improve your signatures using depth. First I will show you some examples so you can see what depth exactly is and how it can drasticly improve your signatures.

Before we start you will need a clear understanding of what depth really is.

In other words, giving our signatures some depth will make them look 3d and much more realistic!

How to create Depth

Now we have clear understanding what depth really is and why we should apply it, how can we create it?

There are multiple ways to create a sence of depth in your signature, the most important two are:
- Having a light source
- Blurring the background so it looks further away.

I will now explain these 2 further using the following stock from GTA4 as an example.

http://www.sigtutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/1.jpg

Using blurring

To create a sense of depth we will blur the buildings in the distance, this way the buildings will look further away and your eyes will be drawn towards the action. For this I used the blur tool (you can find it under the paint bucket).

Using the following settings I blurred everything in the distance, but pay attention that you don’t blur anything you still want to be shown, like here for example the heli.

http://www.sigtutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/2.jpg

After this select the sharpen tool and use it to sharpen the most interesting parts in the picture (here the guy and the heli), you can use the same settings as before, just decrease the master diameter if you need more precision.

Here is how the picture now looks, notice how you now automatically start looking at the focal points!

http://www.sigtutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/3.jpg


Using light to create a sense of depth

To further enhance our sense of depth (and to make our focal point stand out more) we will use the Burn Tool and the Dodge Tool. You can use O to open these tools.

Once again I used a soft round brush with exposure on 60%, change the brush size to a size that fits your picture. I first used 100px for the big open areas and later a smaller 20px to burn/dodge the edges.

Use the Burn Tool to make the things in the background darker, use the dodge tool to make the objects in the foreground brighter and stand out more.

Here was my final result.

http://www.sigtutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/4.jpg

And here is a gif that shows the difference between the original and modified picture!

http://www.sigtutorials.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/11.gif

Now all you had to do was ad some nice looking effects and you would have a great looking signature!
The end

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and you have learned why you should pay attention to depth in your signatures, it will make your signatures look so much better!

There are many other more advanced technique’s to create depth, but in my opinion these basic techniques will do just fine once you have mastered them.

So now go out and practice! A great way to practice is to open up some of your old signatures and see how you could improve depth in these sigs. Feel free to post your results in the comments below!