Hey General, Nice to see some of you work. It seems like you have a real good basis down. I can see that you know how to use brushes, and you have blended every sig/banner nicely. Here are my tips that, I think, will help you to the next level.
Tips:
-All your backgrounds are a tad to plain. Try using this tutorial to help make your grunge backgrounds have depth and boldness. (will insert once I find it)
-Once you are done or close to done with a render, I have found that if you take a 5px 'normal' brush, set the color to white, and set the layer to soft light then start brushing on the highlights of the render and in other unfavorable dark spots that it really helps with the over-all sign.
-With font, that is something that you just have to keep playing with to really understand. The only real advise I can give is to try and make it fit into your signature. You can do this by putting a line under/through it, making it come from behind a render (cutting some of it off), or like have a light saber going throught it. With text, there is no real step by step guide, however, someone will know if you spent 5 minutes on it or an hour. Baiscly the more you do to it, or the more you work it in the better it will look. Also, if you do not know you can get alot of text effects if you go Layer--->Layer Style--->Blending Options after you finish keying your text layer.
-As for blending, your doing well. I do want you to try this other way of blending that offers the same type of effect without so much 'render loss'. (Not saying that is a bad blending method, but I think you need to vary/mix it up a little) Before you 'feather blend' (the blending method you are using now) your render duplicate it. Take the copied layer and go Filter--->Blur--->Garussian Blur Set the Radius to 4.0. Now take the 'original' layer (uncopied one) and drag it to the top of your Layer Box. Once that is done you may 'feather blend' your render (I usually set it at 20px).
Good luck General, and I hope to see more work posted up here soon :)
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