Originally Posted by Kadan

My first ever render. I know it's really plain, and the text color doesn't really match the rest of it, but I don't think it's too bad for not using any layers (my GIMP is all fucked up), and not being able to use CS4, my tool of choice. Please criticise it.

Originally Posted by surf

That's not really a render, bro, unless you have rendered the charachter. Rendering involves taking a stock image and removing a part of it from the rest of the image. What you have there is a signature. The effects used on the render weren't very good. Smudge etc works better than duplicates. I know the tutorial that you used tells you to put the render in that position but it's wrong. Your render should be your focal meaning that it should be the first thing I see, however in this situation the text is. I reccomend moving the focal to the center and making the text much smaller and changing the font to something simple. I think your problem may be that you can't bring up the layers menu, I think you can do this by pressing ctrl+l. I also reccomend you hang around on the site where you found that tutorial, I think it's www.sigtutorials.com. They're really cool guys willing to help you with anything, I post a lot of my work there. I think you should also read this: http://www.sigtutorials.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2539&st=0&start=0.
Edit: @Dbuhos: Don't be a douche, mate. Give him some feedback. Saying stuff like that will only put a person off sigmaking.
Protip: If you don't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Originally Posted by Kadan

Thanks, I have tried the ctrl+l thing, but layers is literally just broken on my GIMP, so I'm re-downloading it now. As soon as I get a decent Internet access through to my house I'll be able to get CS4, which will make things loads easier, as I'm more familiar with it. But thanks for all the feedback and suggestions, Surf.

Also, I got the stock from planetrenders.net, but I did remove part of it (lower body). Is it a render?