Originally Posted by Myrdin

The reason I want to avoid using just text by itself, is due to the background. As I wrote in some of the previous comments, some of them are very dark and it would make it very hard to read. I might change the color of the text, but honestly I dont wanna do that, as I am striving for a certain uniformity of the layout and the way its displayed. The colored text background serves only as a sight buffer. You glance over the sig. and your eyes are instantly locked on the easy to read player ID numbers (easy to read when compared to numbers without the color buffer). Its not the most elegant solution but it certainly is a valid and easy to implement one. I am trying to make it practical rather than "just pretty". The text bar islef is intentional.

Generally speaking, text should never be in your face when it comes to a signature. Unless it's a text signature. It should be visible, readable, but not overbearing. Text bars just do not look good, even if they are intended to be a fix. Why? Because they are overbearing (i.e., they are disconnected from your image and in your face).

Solutions are difficult, not impossible. I'm not sure how much you can do though. You're not using Photoshop so this makes it even harder to explain. Generally you don't add that much text to a signature. If you do, there are workarounds. For instance, instead of having all of the text in one place it gets separated (i.e., Nutaku and DMM). Just looking at your signature, I can see that there is space above each character. If you splice the text, you can put it there.

The benefit of that is that it also becomes more visible than at the bottom, since you'd be looking at both characters faces most likely. Changing fonts and text sizes might also be something to consider. It's not worth having a fancy font if it's difficult to read. You said you don't want to change text colour. That might be impossible for certain backgrounds, but that depends on which ones you use. I'd say different coloured text is better than text bars. By quite a big margin too. You said you wanted uniformity. Well, different coloured text bars aren't uniform, are they now? And they look much much worse than different coloured text, that you can be certain of.

Originally Posted by Myrdin

Borders....hmm yes that might work. Honestly though I am not a big border fan in pictures myself, (unless its the paling out ending in white yet visible line (or darkening into solid black frame, that also works), it might add to the overall effect.
I will give it a try, but considering the tool I am using It would be better to get a fitting image of the borders from somewhere and use that. Any recommendations ?

My recommendation for borders is 1-3 pixels on all sides or top/bottom. Generally black or white, but you can experiment with different colours if they fit. You can make them more extravagant, but I find flamboyant borders to be a distraction. Personal flavour.

Originally Posted by Myrdin

From what you wrote I have a hunch that you might be either well versed or possibly even a pro - or at least much more invested - when it comes to things like image editing and such, so your standard is definitely set up much higher than mine.
My standard is something more akin to: I'll be making these for as long as people enjoy them, is all.

A pro...Oh boy. Nah, not really. I've dabbled with Photoshop signatures a bit, but I am just a bambi. The observations I made were more along the lines of: ''there are some very basic signature standards that should never be broken''. Like sacred rules by signature Gods. Not much more than that. If you're willing to invest the time, it's pretty easy to get the basics down.