Alright, let’s talk about getting this ‘rookie jj sig’ thing sorted. I saw it floating around, looked kinda neat, you know? Like a specific visual flair someone called ‘jj’ was using. Figured, how hard could it be? Famous last words, right?
So, I jumped into my usual software, the one I mess around with for my graphics stuff. First thing, I tried to just eyeball it. Looked at a couple of examples of this ‘jj sig’ online. Seemed like some kind of textured overlay combined with a weird color grading. I started fiddling with the layers.
- Tried adding a noise filter. Nope. Too uniform.
- Messed with gradient maps. Got some wild colors, but not the right vibe.
- Played with texture images I had lying around, setting them to overlay or multiply. Closer, but still felt off, kinda cheap looking.
Honestly, spent a good couple of hours just clicking around, dragging sliders back and forth. Got pretty frustrated. It’s always like this, isn’t it? You see something cool, think ‘easy peasy’, then reality hits you like a sack of bricks. Almost gave up, thought maybe it needed some fancy plugin I didn’t have.
Getting Somewhere Finally
Took a break, grabbed a coffee. Sometimes you just gotta step away. Cleared my head a bit. Then I remembered this one forum post I half-read ages ago. Something about combining specific blend modes in a weird order. Couldn’t hurt to try, right? What did I have to lose?
So, back at the desk. This time, I went methodical.
- Started with the base image.
- Added a solid color layer, something muted. Changed its blend mode to ‘Difference’. Weird, but okay.
- Duplicated the original image, put it on top, desaturated it.
- Set that layer’s blend mode to ‘Overlay’.
- Then, the crucial bit I think I missed before: added a subtle grunge texture image I found deep in my asset folder. Put this right near the top. Set its blend mode to ‘Soft Light’ and dropped the opacity way down, like really low.
And bam. Suddenly, it clicked. It wasn’t exactly like the ‘jj sig’ examples I saw, but it had that feel. That specific gritty-yet-smooth look. It was more about the weird layer stacking and blend modes than any single filter or texture.
Played around with the opacity on that texture layer and the solid color fill for another half hour, tweaking it just right for my image. It’s funny how sometimes the solution is just stacking simple things in a way you wouldn’t expect. Not some magic button.
It’s not perfect, still feels a bit ‘rookie’, like the name suggests I guess. But hey, I got it working. Learned something about blend modes I definitely didn’t understand before. Reminds me of when I first tried fixing my own leaky faucet. Spent a whole Saturday drenched, ended up calling a plumber anyway. But this time, I actually managed to wrangle the digital pipes myself. Feels good. Took way longer than it should have, but it’s done.
