I used to spend sooo, so much time looking for AB pictures. I have like 11,000 on my computer as a result so I'm never short of pictures to use.. just picky about the ones I choose. I hate ones with difficult backgrounds. Takes too much time. I usually use ones that have similar colours and tones if I want to use more than one picture in the signature.
I find now I like to darken my sigs and apply a lot of 'Vivid Light' brush effects, this is using Photoshop, or very basic with one picture and a few brush effects whereas once I liked my sigs to be super bright with lots of brush effects just splashed over the picture.
I've been making graphics for years and years now, mostly wrestling graphics since I've been an avid E-Fed roleplayer for...years and years. This is making me feel old. Anyways, I don't have a set out technique or formula for making anything, I just get an idea and I run with it until I get something I like.
One thing I do like to do a lot though that I'll share is a way to make things stand out using desaturation and blending options. It's really simple and I'm sure people have been doing it forever too, but this is a go to for me. I usually do it on main renders if I need it to pop. So what I do is CMD + J (or CTRL for those on Windows) to duplicate, then I go CMD(CTRL) + SHIFT + U to desaturate the layer. Then to finish it off I set the blending mode to Overlay or Soft Light. It's really simple but it looks good. It tends to darken things a bit but bump up the contrast.
I'm big on text work and trying to make things look interesting by using messing with sizes, boldness, italics, spacing, etc. In the signature I have now, for example there are different sizes, some bolded and italicized bits, and I think it looks better than it would if it was all uniform. I'm also big on using textures into anything, text, shapes, backgrounds, pictures, anything. I just recently got back into using brushes on things but I'm much more of a texture person.
That said I'm not big on making signatures to be honest. I was a part of a graphics forum that specialized in wrestling covers so I'm used to working on documents in the thousands of pixels. I've made signatures since but it isn't as enjoyable for me. Also I tend to not like what I've done once I've started and just do without or stick with whatever it was I was using prior.
