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New Canvas

Open Photoshop and create a new canvas that is sized appropriately for your signature. Mine is 339 x 80 pixels, with a white background (or your specific background color, if you prefer).

Set Colors & Paint

Choose your main color. You will want to use 3 shades of your main color, each on their own layer. The first layer should be the middle shade of the 3 you choose. I wanted an earthy, almost rusted looking sig, so i started with a tan shade.

First, grab a new layer (Layer, New, New Layer) so that you're not painting on your white background. Now, grab your favorite set of grunge brushes - or grab mine here - and liberally coat the first layer with your middle shade.

Dark Shades

Create another new layer (Layer, New, New Layer) and this time set your foreground to the darkest of the 3 shades you will be using. You will want to use your grunge brushes to just accent the overall look - give it some shadow and depth, but don't overdo it.

Light Shades

Make another new layer (Layer, New, New Layer) and this time, set your foreground color to the very brightest of the 3 shades you're using. This one should almost be undetectable in the overall look - but it will add highlight and accent.

Add a Shape

You guessed it - yet another new layer (Layer, New, New Layer).

You will want to set your foreground color to a very dark or very light shade of your main color, depending on how dark or light the overall look of your signature is at this point.

Grab a shape brush in whatever style you like - I'm using a butterfly from my grunge set, but you could use a tribal look or a render as well. This is the main focal point of your signature, that will draw all eyes to your nickname.

Add Your Nick

Add your nick to the signature. I chose to use the font Impact, and added a lighter 2-pixel stroke around the text, which is the same color as my butterfly.

1-Pixel Border - Part One

Now, we get to add a 1-pixel border around the sig. This isn't vital, you can totally skip this step if it isn't something you like the look of.

To make the 1-pixel border, you'll need to do 2 steps. First, grab your rectangle shape tool and create a box inside of your signature. Make sure that the outside edges of the box are where you want your border to be placed.

1-Pixel Border - Part Two

Then, once your box has been rasterized (right-click the shape layer and choose "Rasterize"), select the shape with your magic wand and choose "Select", click "Modify", choose "Contract" and enter "1 pixel" in the dialogue that pops up. Then, hit the backspace key on your keyboard, to end up with this:

Shine - Part 1

One more optional piece - I wanted to add a bit of "shine" to my finished signature. This one takes 3 quick steps to do.

First, set your foreground color to white. Then, use your rectangle tool to "cover" 3/4 of your signature:

Shine - Part 2

Next, use your circular marquee tool to select a huge circle area on the lower area of the white rectangle you've just made. Hit the backspace key to delete this area:

Shine - Part 3

Finally, set your layer mode to "Screen" and lower the opacity of the layer so that it shines but doesn't "cover":

Layers Palette

At this point, your layers palette should look something like mine on the left. What you need to do is make one more white (or whatever color your background color is) layer directly above your background layer. So click on your background layer to highlight it, grab your shape tool, and draw a white rectangle fully over the space of your signature.

When you have your second white layer made, click the "eye" next to your background layer. This will make it temporarily "invisible". Then, click "Layer" and choose "Merge Visible". Tick the "eye" beside your background layer again, and your layers palette should look like mine to the right.

Cut It Up

Now that all your layers are merged, you're ready to start making the cuts that actually turn this into a "Quad" Signature.

Use your marquee tool to make four randomly spaced cuts in your signature. Each "cut" should be 3 pixels wide. To make it just right, I used the single column marquee tool and used my arrow keys to move it one pixel over after clicking delete, to delete 3 pixels in all for each cut:

Stroke It

Wooooo! Last step! Go to your layer styles and add a 1 pixel stroke around the image. To save, you'll find that the reason we left the background un-merged: click the "eye" beside it, and you can save as a transparent .gif so that the background of your forum shows through. Beautiful!