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In this tutorial we will be creating this signature featuring Scarlett Johansson. We will use a set of tools, namely the smudge tool for texture, pen tool for effects, sharpen tool for, well, sharpness and the brush tool to create depth in the image. First, find a wallpaper or image of whatever you want to edit. I used a Scarlett Johansson wallpaper from the cinderella movie that you can download at the bottom of the page. Our goal is to create a cloudy, sort of dreamy effect around Scarlett.

1. Right, get your wallpaper, and put it in your file. Resize if you need to. My file is 300 pixels by 100 pixels.

2. Grab your brush tool, and make a new layer. Make sure you get a hard round brush, about 30 in size. brush around the left and right of your focal point, which in this case is Scarlett Johansson.

3. We’re going to smudge the white brushing. Grab your brush, and go to the brush window. I picked a chalk brush with standard settings apart from scattering. I took these scattering settings:

Start smudging the edges, Try to have it blend into the background.

4. Now we’re going to add a white bar around our render, and make it look like its some sort of cloud going right behind here. We do this by picking a hard brush, my size was around 20 pixels, and brushing from our white area to the sides of our scarlett johansson model.

5. We have to smudge this again, and try to make it look like its fading behind our model. You can do this by making the parts closest to our render a bit darker. Smudge until you are satisfied, then grab your eraser and remove parts that are on top of our render.

6. Under our white brushing, I copied the wallpaper that we started with. I set this layer to screen with 30% Opacity.

7. We’re going to remove sides of our white area. Grab your eraser, and remove the edges. Dont worry if it looks bad, in the next step we will fix it with some more smudging!

8. Grab your smudge tool, and smudge the edges a bit. This is what I ended up with:

9. Grab your eraser, and go back to the wallpaper that we set to screen on 30% opacity. You can see her white ribbon going trough her face, and it looks a bit out of place. I decided to remove the ribbon with the eraser, but kept most of the other stuff there. This was my result:

10. We’re going to add adjustment layers to color the background and our model. After adding the adjustment layers, we will remove parts of it to compliment the wallpaper. Add these 2 adjustment layers:

Channel Mixer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer…):

My result after applying this adjustment Layer:

Add another Channel Mixer layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer…)

Result after adding that layer:

11. Now on the top adjustment layer, click on the channel mixer section, and brush with a black color where you want to remove the adjustment layer. As you can see, I removed the render from the adjustment layer in the first Channel Mixer, and i removed the Background in the second Adjustment Layer:

My result after doing this:

12. Now we’re going to fix bad looking spots in our smudging. If you look at my signature so far you can see the down right corner does not look too good, and you can fix this by either smudging some more like I did, or adding a dark color on top on a new layer and reducing the opacity. I smudged the down right corner and a little on the left:

13. We’re nearly done, add a border to your signature. I like these 2 pixel borders on top and bottom:

14. We’re going to add more detail to our image. I picked the pen tool, and made an outline of the right side of our models face with the pen tool. I then went to Paths and Right Click > Stroke Path, set it to 1 pixel with Black:

Duplicate the lines a move them a bit to the right:

15. We’re going to sharpen our image a bit. Make a new layer, and go to Image > Apply Image… you can now use the sharpen filter (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen…) or use the sharpen tool.

16. Try adding detail, add another line if you are not satisfied like I was or perhaps smudge here and there.

17. I thought that my signature was a bit too dull, so once again I applied my image (new layer, Image > Apply Image) and set this to soft light on a lower opacity. I picked 26% opacity.

18. Pick a color from your render using your eyedrop tool (I used a color from her hair) and on a new layer, brush it over your model. Set this layer to overlay and reduce the opacity a bit. Mine was reduced to 23%

my result after brushing:

19. At this point I still wasn’t satisfied with the result, so I made another layer and applied the image (Image > Apply Image…) and sharpened the background and a part of her face to add more texture.

20. Just to experiment, I flipped the signature horizontally by going to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontall… and I think it looked pretty good.

21. Add text (give text some more attention than I did though!) and as soon as you are satisfied, you’re done!

Feel free to post suggestions, questions or results in the comments!

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