Open up Fireworks MX and create a new file with the size of 400 by 100 pixels. Set the canvas colour to transparent.

400 by 100 pixels is often a good size to make a signature, you don?’t have to choose that size but it is a good size to use. It is also a good idea to have a design already thought up, this will make it easier to create something that you specifically want other than just playing around until you get lucky.

To begin with we need a background for our signature, select the rectangle tool under vector and create a rectangle that covers the whole canvas. Be careful and make sure that the outline isn?’t showing, remove it if you want by selecting the red crossed colour under the rectangle properties.

If you haven?’t made you rectangle large enough to cover the canvas grab one of the blue squares on the edges and increase the size.

In the rectangles properties menu select the type of fill that you want.

You?’ll notice that the rectangles fill changes when you select the type of fill. Select the type of fill that you would like. To the left of the fill select the color edit and have a play around with the colours and how much you want. Click under the linear fill to add more colours and then click on the ink tube to change the colour. I wouldn?’t add too many colours. Fireworks has a few default selections under present that you may like to try. The tubes above the linear fill change the opacity and are just like the colours.

You may notice the black line on your rectangle, this is the direction of the effect, move it around and bring it in and out to change what your effect looks like.

To make the fill not so plain you can add texture to it, select texture under the edge selection(which is not very important for us). Select a texture to go over the top of your rectangle, you can select the strength of how visible the texture is. Make sure that its not too strong. I set mine to 19% transparency.

If you would like to add a few effects to your rectangle then select the + sign under effects on the right hand side of the rectangles properties. You can change the colour of the whole rectangle under Adjust Color. Bevel and Emboss adds shine to your rectangle. Blur blurs, there are a few okay effects in other, Shadow and Glow add shadows to your selected image and Sharpen makes the image look sharper. The bottom two are plugins, some come with Fireworks MX and others you can get elsewhere. They are well worth a look but not covered in this tutorial. You can add effects to your rectangle and other pictures that you choose to use but there is no point of me teaching them as you should learn by trying them out for yourself. The only effect that I have done is Inverted my rectangle and changed the colour by selecting Colourize under Hue/Saturation.

Something that can really top of a sig and make it look really tidy is a nice clean border. There are many cool borders that you can try out but a nice line one should be all that you should need. Create another rectangle, this will automatically be put on a new layer. For the rectangles fill select none(the white box with red diagonal stripe). On the right of the fill options are the line options for the rectangle. Choose whatever colour suits your sig and make the thickness 2 pixels. Make the coordinates and length and width the same in the picture to get it to fit around the 400 by 100 size, change the size if your canvas is a different size.

That?’s the whole background done!

Preparing the bitmaps

One thing you should do before continuing is to save your work.;)

One thing that a sig needs is a decent picture, you should have a picture ready to stick into your sig. It would be much, much easier if the picture was of a character and had solid background colour (such as white). Cutting out a photo or screenshot can be very difficult.

Select File>Open from the Fireworks menu and open the picture that you have chosen. Zoom in so that you can see most of the picture. From the Bitmap menu select the magic wand tool.

Click on an area that you wish to remove from the picture, such as a solid white background. An outline of the area that is selected will appear, if this is close enough to the picture that you want delete it. If you want it to select more, if there is too much space between that and the picture increase the tolerance in the properties section. If you accidentally delete too much be sure to go Edit>Undo and undo your error.

Select the now cleanly cut out picture and right click and select edit>copy then open up your signature and right click and select paste to paste your image. Drag your picture into the location that you wish to have it. If you notice that the picture isn?’t quite cut out enough and you have increased the tolerance but it goes into the character then use the eraser tool and attempt to clean it up, it gets very difficult to clean up picture. This is something that many people spite, white outlines.

No matter what your outcome is, select your picture and move it into the right location. If you need to shrink your picture select the scale tool from the tools menu under Select. Then grab one of the corners and move it to the size you want. Fireworks automatically makes the space equal for the length and width unless you don?’t select the corners. You can also rotate the image in this mode. You can also get to the scale option by selecting Modify>Transform. In this menu you can also flip the picture.

Once your picture is in the right place and at the right size you can delete the part of the picture that covers the border if you would like. To do this select the Marguee tool just above the Magic wand tool. With the layer of the character selected use the tool to cover the area that you want to remove around the border and delete it. This should make the border fit in nicely and make the character look in the picture.

If you have several characters that you want to add you can have them at different sizes, flipped and you can also change their alpha if you would like. You can change the alpha by clicking on the alpha setting on the bitmaps (characters) properties.

As mentioned before you can add effects to the images by clicking on the + button and selecting the effects and the variables for them that you want. I don?’t want to explain them all as it is better to try them out for yourself. I recommend using Adjust Color>Hue/Saturation and then clicking colorize. I use it a fair bit. But the rest of the effects are for you to try out. Have fun. The effects can be added to everything; vectors and bitmaps.

Time for text

Okay we have a sig but we need a name to proudly show off who made the signature. Select the text tool under Vector in the tool menu. Move it to where you want the text to be and drag out the length that you want, Fireworks will again make a new layer. Type in your name and have a look at the text properties. The set out should be familiar to anyone that has used a Word processing program. So select the font and colour that you want. You can change your text to whatever you want you can add glow and shadow to it as well. A good tip would be to set the outline to a solid colour and then set the inside fill as clear. There are heaps of effects that you can create with your text.

Final Step exporting

Okay, is your sig perfect? Good. Go to File> Export Preview and start to export your signature. Here are my tips on the file type:

JPEG- this is best for a solid picture with no animation and transparency so if you have stuck to what?’s in the tutorial then select this. You can choose the quality as well, but it increases the size of your file.

GIF-Less quality then a JPEG but it can be used for animation and transparency which is great. But it?’s terrible for solid pictures.

You can also use PNGs and BMPs but it is better to stick to GIF or JPEG formats.

When you are ready click Export and save your file.

There you go your first sig. If you wish to host it I suggest going to Imageshack.us and hosting it from there, be sure to remove all of the adds to imageshack and just the have the IMG tags and the address of your picture.

Here is what I have made from this tutorial:

DP?’s showpiece

All the best when making your sigs. I?’d love to see some of the work that people have done by learning this about making sigs from this tutorial so please�just�leave�a�comment and make sure that you have exported your signatures.