Quote Originally Posted by Victini View Post
I've had them in the past and even when my banner-making skills were kind of shabby, people laid siege on them. XD

Funny how it all started many years ago when I was on Gamespot's forums and I saw people with signature banners and I thought they were awesome, but only exclusive members could have them. Not being an exclusive member, jealousy kicked in, but I didn't stick with those forums for long before just going over to the original Proboards PE2K forum. I realized people made them with Photoshop, and I was DETERMINED to get better at making them having a bit of familiarity with Photoshop myself.

Some people might say "oh, you're just throwing a bunch of renders together into one." Nah. That's like throwing a bunch of nails and planks of wood in a pile and calling that a house. A lot of it is knowing how to piece things together, blend things into one, having the right tools and knowing how to use them, and be willing to try new things in new environments. And sometimes tools you thought were useless before have other uses you might have never thought of...

...except "Dissolve." Lordy, after many years of working with Photoshop, I have yet to find a good way to use Dissolve for anything. XD All it does it make stuff look like pixelated splat. XD
Oooooh believe me. I felt the EXACT same way. Over on GT when I was getting use to that forum. I originally had only an avatar that I’d just pull from off google somewhere. It was blurry most of the time and odd. Then I saw all these awesome looking images below a users every post and wanted one myself. I felt jealous not having something awesome looking. Blogs were the same. They had additional banners to show off. I wanted part in each of these. One day I found a friend that offered to make me some. I still remember his username (HolyRoxas) xD. He was AWESOME! He made some avatars and blog banners for me from time to time. Over the years I made a few more friends that would often do it. Since I didn’t know how.

A friend then hooked me up with CS3. I tried it out. Over and over and over again. To no avail. I mean I improved very slightly, but it’s never been how I wanted to. Plus not having a “real” Photoshop kinda hurt more than anything...and GIMP was a detriment more than anything. Maybe one day I’ll have a real “working” Photoshop and be able to make a real attempt.