I used to mess around with making shitty forum signatures many many years ago... saw some pretty awesome ones on this website so I got inspired to find some tutorials and make my own.

I chose this stock: http://hbowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/CaponeHisCigar.jpg

Using a handful of different techniques from multiple tutorials this is what I ended up with:


Considering the circumstances I'm fairly happy with it but can see there's a lot of room for improvement.

It looks a little flat to me, was wondering what sort of things I could do to add a bit of depth. I blurred the outter parts and sharpened the focal point but not sure if it did the job.
The lighting also looks a little shoddy, I used a circle brush set to softlight... is this the correct way?

Any other general improvements or wrong doings you could point out would be great, would like to hear what I did wrong and what I did right before starting the second one.

I like the idea, Get a diff c4d or smudge it???
maybe add a different gradient, and get ride of the circle flare.

dont listen to that guy
it's not bad
text- try not to do random overlay text
top left corner, that ddarker area is a little distracting
try soft brushing darker colours and using a bit of sharpen and blur as well to create some dept
also the colours look washed out, try more contrast as well

Found some free time and tried my first smudge sig, colors are a bit wonky and I think the smudge lines are too straight but definitely gonna be trying some more of these



Any glaring mistakes on this one?

His leg is a bit to bright

comp is off and the details on the smudging are rough