Final Result:

Part 1: Abstract Brushing

1. Open a new document, any size. For this tutorial, I will simply make a small 300 by 100 pixel document.

2. Find yourself quality abstract brushes, anything will do. Try to find a good brush pack you can adapt to easily, has brilliant look, or are just simple to use. Anything that suits you. Open your brushes up.

3. Make sure your colors are default, press D just to be sure. Switch your defaults to make white foreground and black background by pressing X. Now fill your canvas with black by pressing Ctrl+Backspace.

4. Take a large brush from your pack. Lightly brush on the outer parts of the document, try not to over-do it.

Tip: You can rotate the canvas to brush at different angles by going to Image > Rotate Canvas.

Here is how much brushing I did.

5. Make a new layer by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N.Take smaller brushes and lightly brush more on the inside.

Tip: You can resize your brush by right-clicking on the canvas and changing the Master Diameter.

Here is what I have brushed so far.

Part 2: Sparkle, Starry, and Motion Brushing

This section I will show you how to add some sparkle, star, and motion brushing to your background with the abstract. This section is completely optional.

6. Open a pack of good sparkle brushes. Make a new layer, Ctrl+Shift+N. Brush lightly around the entire canvas.

Tip: You can lower the opacity and the flow of the brush if the brush is too bold.

Here is what I have brushed.

7. Open a pack of sparkly star brushes. Make a new layer, Ctrl+Shift+N. Brush very lightly across the canvas.

Tip: You can lower the opacity of the layer to decrease the boldness of all the brushing you have applied, and blend the brushing better.

Here is what I have at this point.

8. Open a pack of nice motion brushes. Make a new layer, Ctrl+Shift+N. Brush lightly around the canvas.

Tip: You can change the blending mode of the layer to either Overlay or Soft Light for slightly different results.

Here is what I have brushed.

Part 3: Adjustment Layer Touch-ups

At this point, there are several adjustment layers we can use to help with depth in our background here. I will only cover a few in this section. For best results, try and combine a few adjustment layers and different techniques.

Color Fill

To add a simple contrast, we can add a Solid Color adjustment layer, Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color, and adding solid black.

Now set this layer to Overlay, or Soft Light.

I set mine to Overlay.

Pattern Fill

Another way of adding contrast, is to add a pattern. Two very common patterns for this technique are scanlines and boxes.

To add either of these patterns, goto Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern, and select the pattern.

Now you can either set this layer to Overlay, Soft Light, or lower the opacity of the layer to about 10% to 25%, even a combination of both.

Tip: For better results, you can take the eraser tool with a low opacity, and erase some parts of the pattern around the image.

Scanlines:

Boxes:

Levels

This adjustment can change the way lights and darks are distributed across the image, as well as the in between colors. To make a new levels layer, goto Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels.

Simple move the small sliders around until you are satisfied. For a darker image, slide the Black scroller to the right, and for a lighter image, scroll the White scroller to the left. You can also adjust the Grey slider accordingly.

Here is the result I have after using Levels.

Curves

This is about the most difficult to explain. From my understanding, Curves is also another way of changing the way colors are distributed across the image, but in a more complicated way than Levels does. Apparently it does this by channel also. To make a new curves layer, goto Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves.
You can move the graph around, or draw your own line. This setting you will have to completely experiment with.

Tip: If you are completely lost with using the Curves adjustment, you can use Auto Curves, a feature that makes Photoshop attempt to automatically configure the curves for best results. Be prepared that this feature may not be the best choice in most cases however. To use this feature, in the Curves menu, press the Auto Tab.

Here is my result after using the Auto feature.

Brightness/Contrast

This adjustment will simply adjust the brightness and contrast of the image, an easy way to quickly make an image darker or lighter. To make a new brightness and contrast layer, goto Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast.

Simply move the brightness bar to the right for a brighter image, and to the left for a darker image. Moving the contrast bar to the right will increase the contrast between the colors, such as the contrast of white and black, where moving the bar to the left will decrease contrast.

For most images, the best depth can be achieved by lowering the brightness slightly and rising the contrast slightly.

Here is my result after using Brightness/Contrast.

Auto Features

Photoshop can automatically try to adjust certain options with the image for best results. Please note that it may not always have the best results that you want, but sometimes it may help.

Auto Levels

A nice alternative to Levels in some cases. Simply goto Image > Adjustments > Auto Levels.

Here is my outcome with Auto Levels.

Auto Contrast

An alternative to brightness/contrast I believe, this feature tries to add contrast to the image automatically. Simply goto Image > Adjustments > Auto Contrast.

Here is my outcome with Auto Contrast.

Part 4: Color

Coloring really helps to bring an image out, and make it more interesting.

Here are some results on different ways of coloring and multicoloring.

Part 5: Text

Text is always in interesting part of making a signature. There are unlimited techniques you can use for adding text, you just have to experiment for yourself.

Here are a few of my tips on adding text:

• Make the text creative, don't just add some text that has absolutely nothing to do with the piece. Be creative and make a title that fits the overall art of the graphic.
  
  
• Make the font match, try to pick a font that fits, don't just slap some bad font on. For example, for this abstract style, don't slap some broken font, or some very bad pixel font, it simply does not match. Pick a good matching font.
  
  
• Make the text blend, be creative with the blending options. Don't just slap on some glows and embosses and think you have some good text. Use reasonable blending options. Usually a small drop shadow and maybe a slight outer glow usually looks fine, so does a simple 1 pixel stroke. This may sound surprising to some of you, but metallic fonts don't match everything. It drives a lot of us crazy when beginners add a huge, ugly bevel text with all these little shines and stuff to a sig, it kills the whole point of text.
  
  
• Make the text small, try not to make your text so huge that it fills the entire signature. Yes, it may be good for advertising, but in most cases it just plain out looks ugly, make your text a reasonable size.
  
  
• Place the text creative, try to place the text where it will look good. Don't just simply place text in some random place, and don't always place it in a certain corner. If there is a nice spot in the brushing, there may be a creative way you can incorporate the text into that spot. Remember you can transform, rotate, and resize text!

Final Result:

After adding text and some fixing, here are my results.

Additional Results

Here are a few other results I have created.

Resources

Brushes

Included here are the brush packs I used for this tutorial. These brushes are compatible with Adobe Photoshop 7 and up.

• alias abstract pack1
• Motion Brushes by KeReN R
• herokeepers sparkle set 1
• cruiza 2

Fonts

Included here are the fonts I used for my result.

• Yahoo Font
• Eight Track Font