In my experience with photoshop, these are several things in which people who are new to the program tend to do, and they are not good for your piece. You dont have to take my advice, but i suggest you do.

TEXT:
1. NEVER use drop shadow
2. ONLY use borders if it is to make either (A)A grafitti/retro text or (B) on pixel fonts
3. Always have text on your work if it is a sig or avy
4. If you are unable to find a good text, rely on pixel fonts. Making sure they are used correctly with NO anti-alias.
5. Any other font used besides a pixel font should ALWAYS be anti-aliased.

BORDERS:
1. ALWAYS have a border.
2. Try to diversify your borders (aka, dotted border, different colors, 3px, 2px...)

GENERAL:
1. When multicoloring, use colors that go well together. Subtlety is key.
2. Cluttered is ALWAYS bad.
3. Stocks are optional, but are usally more good than bad.
4. Use stocks and text to cover up mistakes.
5. Blend your stocks and text with the background.
6. Cut out your stocks neatly before using them.
7. When using vectors, the circular marqee, pen tool, and custom shape tools are your best friends.
8. NEVER use downloaded brushes.

Uhm.. why not?

lol i knew ud reply to that :-)


well i dont think these rules are like solid i mean everyones got thir own style dont tey

because it doesnt make you better if you use downloaded brushes. If you make your own, you understand the media in which you are working with. if you dont understand the medium, you wont understand the project. if you dont understand the project, you have no purpose. purpose is everything. if your always looking for a set of downloaded brushes, you'll constantly be relying on someone else's ingenuity and work to progress yourself. it even feels better to make a piece without any downloaded brushes.

so to summarize:

1) it doesnt make you better; you stay at the same level
2) it feels better to make your own
3) its kind of cheating/ripping.

I used drop shadow in my BloodRayne sig (I thought I did), don't see anything wrong with it. It's not the most noticable though, but it works. Always having text in images, meh it's not neccesary, looks good without it. Although thats kind of the purpose of your sig. Now font in the Avi it's ok, but most of the time I prefer none. Borders aren't really needed even though more often then not they look better. Basicaly I make my sigs and avis how ever I want, if I'm happy with how they turned out then that's all that matters. I don't mean to dampen your topic though, you present some good tips.

1. yes it does, ive definitely improved since i started

2. i suppose so, but using others are still fun

3. not one bit! other people post their brushes because they WANT them to be used

As for your "purpose" thing, the purpose of PS to ME is to have fun. I don't want to spend my time making brushes, I want to spend it making sigs, that to me is more fun.

those are good tips, but most of them are sort of more of an opinion thing. like drop shadow? whats wrong with drop shadow? and borders are not an absolute necessity. plus downloaded brushes. saying "they dont make you feel good" is sort of putting words in our mouths. i dont feel bad at all using stuff i downloaded from other people. dont get me wrong they are good, but like i said, they are opinion.

let me put it this way. initially, you will get better. but then you will develop a standstill and never progress from that state. as for the opinionated statements, im just saying that in all of my experience a "drop shadow" has never come in handy except once. and that was to do a sort of "engrave", which i could have done another way. and yes, borders ARE an absolute necessity. if you cant make a new layer, select all, stroke 1px inside, then that is just sad. by a border, i mean a line around the outside. and if you say it takes up too much time, i can do it in under 15 seconds.