In this tutorial I'm going to show you what I think is the best technique to turn a signature
And keep in mind that this technique could be used with any logo or graphic.
But I will use a signature to demonstrate how it all works.
Okay, let’s get started.
This is the image that we want to apply our watermark to.
I recommend that you use your Welcome Tablet to create your signature in a separate layer,
and that’s what I have here.
And I simply use my initials, but, of course, you can use your own signature, your logo,
or any other graphic that you want to use as your watermark.
Now, if you don’t have a welcome tablet, let me quickly show you what you can do.
You can write your initials on a piece of paper, like I have here, and scan that into
Photoshop or even take a photo with your cell phone.
And, of course, try to use dark ink on white paper.
Then, go into the Channels Panel and really select any of the channels, they should all
be pretty much the same.
Duplicate a Channel and we’re going to work with that to create our selection.
Right after that, I’m going to press Ctrl I/ Command I on the Mac to Invert.
And we’re going to use this to create a selection.
Anything that is white will be selected, and anything that is black will not be selected.
So, we want to make sure the background is completely black.
So I’m going to go into Image + Adjustments + Levels.
And just click and drag this black point to the right, and drag the white point to the
left.
And I’m going to drag the midpoint to the left, to make sure that we have the inside
of this text white.
Then I can press OK.
Notice that there are some other white spots around the text.
So I’m going to easily remove those by selecting the Lasso Tool, making a very rough selection
around my signature.
Right click on the selection and click on Select Inverse and then fill with black.
Black is my Foreground color, so I can press Alt Backspace / Option Delete on the Mac to
fill with the Foreground Color.
And then I can Deselect by pressing Ctrl D/ Command D.
At this point, I can continue working on the inside of the text, or leave it with this
rough texture, that is totally up to you.
One quick thing that I want to show you is that you could also use Image + Apply Image,
and select the Channel, the copy that you made.
So in my case, Blue copy, and use the Blending Mode, Screen to apply itself using Screen
which will make the image even brighter.
So that’s before and after.
So you can do that as well.
Now that my signature is white and the background is black, I can press Ctrl/ Command on the
Mac, and click on the Channel thumbnail.
That will load my signature as a selection.
Then click on RGB.
Go back into my layers and make a Solid Color.
Black will be my Foreground color.
I’m going to disable the layer below it.
And you’ll notice that we now have this signature on its own layer.
And that’s what you want to do.
But I’ll continue with the tutorial using this signature that was created using the
welcome tablet.
But again, the graphic itself is not that important.
The important thing in this tutorial is the technique that I’m going to show you, not
necessarily the graphic that we use.
You can use any graphic that you like.
So in other tutorials you may have seen that they recommend that you create a Brush as
your signature and while there’s nothing wrong with that, there are certain limitations.
So let me show you why I don’t think that’s the best solution.
So, if we decided to create a Brush out of the signature, you could just simply go into
Edit + Define Brush Preset, and you can create a Brush out of that graphic.
And now you have a brush that you can use to paint your watermark.
And you can use the bracket keys on the keyboard to increase or decrease the size of the brush.
And, of course, you can change the color of the brush to something else, like red, and
continue painting on your image to apply your watermark.
And, again, while there is nothing wrong with that I think that there are better ways of
doing this.
So I’m going to press Ctrl Alt Z / Command Option Z on the Mac to undo and come back
to our original signature.
Now, the reason that I don’t prefer this method that is because when you save a Brush
Preset, you cannot save Blending Modes, Opacity, Flow, Color, or Layer Styles with a Brush
Preset.
You can sort of do it by using a Tool Preset.
When you create a Tool Preset, you can include Color, and you can include Blending Modes,
Opacity, and Flow.
But it doesn’t allow me to use Layer Styles.
So, if you’ve been watching The Photoshop Training Channel for a while now, then you’ll
know that I like using techniques that give you a lot of control.
And I’m going to go to a signature layer and apply a couple of adjustments so that
you can see the power of the technique I’m going to show you.
But before I do that, I’m going to create a New Solid Color Adjustment Layer so that
it becomes a new background and you can see what I’m going to do a little bit better.
I’m going to double click to the side of the signature layer to bring up the Layer
Style Window.
Then, I’m going to bring the Fill Opacity all the way down to 0.
That is going to allow so that the only visible pixels that we see on that layer are pixels
generated through the Layer styles.
So the first thing I’m going to do is click on Color Overlay, and we’re going to use
white as our Overlay color.
Then I’m going to add Drop Shadow, and I can adjust the shadow by clicking and dragging
here on the side.
And you can see the shadow there.
Maybe increase the Opacity, just a tiny bit and the Blur.
And, once again, the aesthetic look of this logo is really not that important.
I’m just applying different effects so that you can see how it all works.
Then I’m going to go into the Blending Options and reduce the Opacity to 75, and press OK.
I’m also going to change the Blending Mode to Screen.
So now we’ve applied Layer Styles, changed the Blending Mode and the Opacity.
And this is going to be our watermark.
So it’s no longer going to be that Brush that we created earlier.
The watermark would be this graphic.
And I’m going to go into Window + Library, and this is going to open up my Libraries
Panel.
And I have a library called Tutorial Ideas, and that’s where I’m going to drop in
that signature.
So I’m going to click and drag it in there and now that signature, with all those effects
that we applied, are in a CC Library.
That means that it’s synced up into Adobe Creative Cloud and it’s accessible through
all my installations of Photoshop and my other Adobe applications.
So I could also use this on a video, for example if I’m using Adobe Premier or Adobe After
Effects or any other application that syncs up to the Creative Cloud Library.
So now I can add my watermark to this photo in one of two ways.
You can right click on it and select Place Linked.
Which is the same thing as clicking and dragging it on to the image.
So that I could scale it down and place it accordingly.
And here it is.
The other method is by right clicking and selecting Place Layers.
I could also scale it, and bring it down and place it accordingly.
Now, even though they both look the same on the photo, they’re not really the same.
One of them has the Creative Cloud link to it so it’s linked to the instance inside
the Creative Cloud, and the other does not have that link.
So, you could make adjustments to it, for example, change the Color Overlay to red,
and make any other adjustments that you like.
The signature that is connected to the Creative Cloud account, can be edited.
But the thing about that is that once you edit that image, it will edit all instances
of it.
Because what you really are editing is this graphic here inside the Creative Cloud.
And that’s actually really powerful because I can double click on that signature and maybe
my company logo changes to something else, or maybe my new company logo is this shape
here.
And let me remove the stroke and make it white and just place it in the center.
So this will be my new watermark, it will no longer be the signature.
Then I can duplicate the Layer Styles from the previous layer by holding Alt / Option
on the Mac and clicking on the Effects icon and dragging that on to the new shape layer.
I’ll remove the original signature and then I’ll close this Creative Cloud Asset and
save it.
And notice how it changes it here and the instance that is linked on to the Creative
Cloud.
And that is also true for all of my images where I’m using that Creative Cloud Asset
to create my watermark.
Let me know in the comments down below if you think this technique would be useful to
you.
As always, thank you so much for watching and I will talk to you again very soon.