Joseph.. I had reference images included rather than links to em... but you've got a limit on how many images someone can post in any given post. Turn that junk off if ya want tutorials with reference images bro. Makes life much easier and convenient. Hope the tutorial helps regardless.
Tutorial: Basic Tech Signature Using Simple Fade Technique
By: livetoserve
How to create a basic tech signature (Half Life 2 Style) using simple fade effects and a little bit hue/saturation and a couple of tech brushes.
1) Create a new document 150px tall and 450px wide with a transparent background.
2) Create your background yourself or do what I did and use a render you acquired from elsewhere. (If you use a render image, you can delete the original layer since the image will create it's own layer)
3) Now that you have a background add your photo you want to fade into the background. Place it anywhere on the canvas. I'll put mine on the left side.
As I mentioned above.. this would be a tech signature (Half Life 2 Style) so I used an image from a Half Life 2 character.
http://img342.imageshack.us/img342/6918/image18ya.jpg
4) Now that you have your image placed where you want it, grab your lasso tool. It literally looks like a lasso. Second tool down on the left column of your tool bar. If you don't see it. Right click the tool that's there and select the lasso tool.
5) With the lasso tool, make an outline around the area you want to be seen in the finished product. (Leave 15px or so more than you think you should to allow for the fade effect)
Should look something like this..
http://img345.imageshack.us/img345/4493/image27lu.jpg
Obviously it doesn't need to be exact. Now for the fade effect.
6) Under the Select menu choose Feather. When the box comes up type 15 in the box and click ok. You'll see that the outline smooths out. Like the image below.
http://img345.imageshack.us/img345/9043/image38wn.jpg
7) Now that your outline is feathered. Make sure you still have the layer with the image you want faded in selected. Now inverse your selection by right clicking on the selected area and clicking "Inverse Selection" or press Control+I.
Should look like this...
http://img330.imageshack.us/img330/9421/image42wc.jpg
8) After you've inversed your selection, press the backspace or delete key to delete the areas selected and watch your image fade into the background. Hit delete as many times as it takes to fade the image as much as you need to.
9) Deselect the selected area by clicking on the selected area while you still have the lasso tool in hand.
Voila.. faded image as you see below
http://img330.imageshack.us/img330/8409/image52ws.jpg
Now lets have some fun..
With your faded image layer selected, merge your 2 layers together by merging down. (Control+E)
10) Now that your image is faded, press Control+U to bring up your hue/saturation settings. Make sure you have "Colorize" selected. Fiddle with the colors until you get your desired color.
11) Now that you've got a colored image, we can add some text. For this example I'm going to use a font called Borg 9.
12) Add whatever type style you want to your text so it looks right to you.
13) Now to add some fun tech brushes. Create a new layer and call it brushes. Now just go nuts with tech brushes until you're happy with your result. I used a light grey color and a 60% opacity so they don't stand out too much. If you don't have tech brushes, get some. Google "Tech Brushes". Should come up with some decent sites to download brushes.
After you're done with your brushes... You're done... here's my finished product.
Bout as basic a tech signature as you can do, but with a little time spent and some tweaking.. even a simple signature like this one can look pretty killer.
Hope this helps!
Scott
Basic Tech Sig (Simple Fade Technique)
Basic Tech Sig (Simple Fade Technique) 
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Linear Mode
