Forum Signature Generator Reborn!

A few people who've been on the forum for a while may remember the Forum Signature Generator that I made, originally inspired by @Poofiemus' post. In the end it didn't seem to get much traction. I guess a shell script was probably a bit too fiddly or intimidating for most users.... 😢

That's why I've been hard at work, and now I'm able to present to you:

DDsiggen - Tierparkzone's Forum Signature Generator

A standalone program to turn your favourite doll photos into images for your forum signature.

<GitHub Link>

The program offers all the functionality of my old script, including all extra features I described later in that thread plus a lot more.
It further adds a graphical interface and many quality of life improvements.
All features that I deem necessary are finally implemented as of ver.2.09.
However, I plan to keep adding some extra functionality / customization options in the future.

Features:
Two modes are currently available.

Quick Sig:
Generate a signature from multiple photos with only a few clicks.

• Batch import photos from the working directory and reorder them
• Arrange photos into one or two signature images, while keeping their size as large as possible
• Select one of the provided alpha masks
• Export the final signature image(s)

Create new:
Generate a signature with custom text and additional options.

• Set the preferred aspect ratio for your photos
• Batch import photos from the working directory
• Import photos one by one from anywhere on your computer or from the web
• Batch import photos from your Doll Directory entries
• Manually adjust the crop for individual photos or for groups of photos at once
• Add or import up to two text layers ("name" and "epithet") that will get applied to the photos
• Reorder photos and text as desired
• Select one of the provided alpha masks
• Customize text font, colors and positions for each text layer (you can also use your own font files)
• Apply shadow and/or glow effects to the text layers
• Choose how the photos will be arranged in the signature image(s) or leave it to the program
• Export the final signature image(s) in multiple resolutions

 

For Windows users:

• Download "DDsiggen_<version#>_win.zip" and use the Windows executable (.exe) inside.

For Linux users:

• Download "DDsiggen_<version#>_linux.zip" and use the Linux executable (no file extension) inside.
• Alternatively, download "DDsiggen_<version#>_win.zip". The Windows executable (.exe) inside should run without issue under Wine.

For Mac users:

• Download "DDsiggen_<version#>_mac.zip" and use the Mac x64 executable (no file extension) inside.
• The Mac version is packaged for Intel CPU Macs, users with an Apple Silicon CPU Mac should be able to run the program with Rosetta2 (untested).
• If you have Wine installed on your Mac, download "DDsiggen_<version#>_win.zip". The Windows executable (.exe) inside should run under Wine on Mac.

Run directly in Python (any OS):

• Download the Source code and run "DDsiggen.py" in Python
• Requires an installation of Python on your system as well as some additional python packages (check the README.txt for details)

 

How to use - Preparation (any OS):

• Extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP file
• (Optional but recommended) Copy the doll photos you want to use in your signature into the same folder as the extracted files (see image below)
• (Optional) You can enter your dolls' names into the "names.txt" and "epithets.txt" files
• (Optional) You can copy additional fonts into the "fonts" folder
• (Optional) You can paste the links to your dolls' doll directory pages into the "doll_directory.txt" file
  

 

How to use - Windows:

• Run "DDsiggen_<version#>.exe" by double clicking
  • On first launch, you will get the warning shown in the images below, since Windows does not know this program
  • You can click on "More info", then "Run anyway" to start the program
    
• A terminal window will open
• Shortly afterward, your browser will open a new tab displaying the program's UI
  • On first launch, you may get a firewall alert
  • Denying the communication request will not impact use with local photos (only import from the web)
• Once the program is ready, it should look similar to this:
  

 

How to use - Mac:

• Run "DDsiggen_<version#>" by double clicking
  • More recent MacOS versions may require you to right-click -> "Run" or "Run in Terminal" instead
  • I have limited capability to test the Mac version - please report here or on GitHub if you have issues running it
• A terminal window will open
  • The terminal may appear to be stuck for several seconds before the program starts up properly
• After a few seconds, your browser will open a new tab displaying the program's UI
  • On first launch, you may get a firewall alert
  • Denying the communication request will not impact use with local photos (only import from the web)

 

How to use - Linux:

• Run "DDsiggen_<version#>" by double clicking
  • Depending on your distro you may have to use right-click -> "Run" or "Run in Terminal" instead
• A terminal window will open
• After a few seconds, your browser will open a new tab displaying the program's UI

 

How to use - In general (any OS):

• Once the program shows in your browser, follow the instructions to generate your signature images
• You can use either "Quick Sig" or "Create New"
• Use Quick Sig if you don't need text or any detailed options
  
• Use Create New for maximum customization
  
• Exported signature images can be found in the "signatures" subfolder
• How to exit:
  • If you use any of the "Exit Application" buttons in the program, the terminal window will close automatically. You may now close the browser tab.
  • Closing the terminal window will terminate the program and your browser will display a "Connection lost" message. You may now close the browser tab.
  • Simply closing your browser tab will not terminate the program! (By reopening the tab you may continue where you left off.) Close the terminal window to fully terminate the program.
  • If you terminate the program in any other way than using the "Exit Application" buttons, some temporary files may remain in a "tmp" subfolder. These will get overwritten/cleared the next time you run the program.

 

Examples:

Here are a few sample signatures created with DDsiggen.

If you don't need any text, you can use "Quick Sig":

 

With "Create New" you can get creative with text:

Japanese names are possible, too:

Why not both?

Go with the style that I'm currently using (you'll need your own fonts for this):

Or give it your personal twist:

You can add other text, not just names:

You can also export the sub-images individually at 200px x 200px resolution to create something like character badges:
        

 

Here's a test signature with 1000 photos:

This takes about 20 minutes to generate and 15 Gigs of RAM. Is it possible? - Yes! Is it worth it? - Probably not.

 

So, go have fun with your doll photos and create some awesome signatures. 😁 And if you do so, why not show 'em off here?

Feel free to let me know about any issues you might encounter and I'll try to help you get this running.

You can also post ideas for additional features, but I cannot promise I'll be able to implement them.
 

Edited Wednesday at 01:50 AM by Tierparkzone
Updated for program version 2.09

<reserved for updates>

4 hours ago, Tierparkzone said:

A few people who've been on the forum for a while may remember the Forum Signature Generator that I made, originally inspired by @Poofiemus' post. In the end it didn't seem to get much traction. I guess a shell script was probably a bit too fiddly or intimidating for most users.... 😢

That's why I've been hard at work, and now I'm able to present to you:

DDsiggen - Tierparkzone's Forum Signature Generator

A standalone program to turn your favourite doll photos into images for your forum signature.

<GitHub Link>

The program currently offers the same functionality as the basic version of my old script, 
plus a graphical interface and several quality of life improvements. 
I plan to add additional functionality / customization options in the future.

 

Fow Windows users:
   - Grab "DDsiggen_<version#>_win.zip" and use the Windows executable (.exe) inside.

For Linux users:
   - Grab "DDsiggen_<version#>_linux.zip" and use the Linux executable inside.
   - Alternatively, grab "DDsiggen_<version#>_win.zip". The Windows executable (.exe) inside should run without issue under Wine.

For Mac users:
   - I don't currently have a Mac machine available to pack a MacOS executable. If someone is willing to pack a version for Mac, feel free to fork the GitHub repository.
   - If you have Wine installed on your Mac, grab "DDsiggen_<version#>_win.zip". The Windows executable (.exe) inside should run under Wine (untested on Mac).
   - Alternatively, you can run the source script directly in Python (see below).

Run directly in Python (any OS):
   - Grab the Source code and run "DDsiggen.py" in Python
   - Requires an installation of Python on your system
   - Also requires the additional Python packages "nicegui" and "pillow" (future versions may require further packages).

Users of Linux should have Python installed by default as part of their operating system, but it may be outdated depending on what version of Python @Tierparkzone's script was written in and whether it uses features exclusive to a certain Python version. Since updating the system Python may break things, I recommend using something like pyenv (which lets you use multiple Python versions on the same system easily) if it turns out DDsiggen.py needs a very new Python.

For macos, it depends on the age of your Mac. Apparently newer ones don't include python in the base OS install anymore. But see https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html 

As for the executable generation, apparently it's possible to generate executables for systems you don't own using Github Actions.

This is amazing, thank you! 
 

6 hours ago, Kemonomimicry said:

Users of Linux should have Python installed by default as part of their operating system, but it may be outdated depending on what version of Python @Tierparkzone's script was written in and whether it uses features exclusive to a certain Python version. Since updating the system Python may break things, I recommend using something like pyenv (which lets you use multiple Python versions on the same system easily) if it turns out DDsiggen.py needs a very new Python.

Thanks for the additional clarification. Depending on your Linux distribution you may have to use a virtual environment to install additional packages like "nicegui" anyway. It looks like pyenv would solve that together with any possible version issues. - Although, all of this is only necessary if you want to run the script (DDsiggen.py) directly in python. The packaged executable effectively includes its own portable python environment and is therefore independent of what you have installed on your system. 

 

6 hours ago, Kemonomimicry said:

As for the executable generation, apparently it's possible to generate executables for systems you don't own using Github Actions.

Oooh, that's good to know. I'm pretty much a beginner with GitHub, but I'll look into that. Thanks for the tip!

Now I just need to earn permission to change my forum signature here.

I'm currently working on an update for the signature generator that introduces the "Create New" functionality with a lot more options including customizable text on each photo. Although, it'll probably be a few more weeks before it's ready for release...

Here's a little teaser, if you're curious:

Spoiler

 

If anyone so far has tested the current version of the signature generator, please let me know how it went? Did everything work as expected? Did you run into any bugs or were some things unclear? The more feedback I get from you, the more I may be able to improve the upcoming releases.

And you don't have to put this off until you took proper new photos of your dolls. Try it with a few old ones to see if it works how you'd like it to. The program is supposed to make signature creation quick and easy. - Once you got new photos, just replace the old ones and run the generator again. 

 

On 10/29/2025 at 3:26 AM, Kemonomimicry said:

As for the executable generation, apparently it's possible to generate executables for systems you don't own using Github Actions.

I had a first look at this. It might be possible but will require some fiddling around with the build script. I'm not sure when I'm going to get around to playing with that.

The big update is here! DDsiggen Version 1.16 is now available, and it brings support for text on your signatures!

The program can now basically do everything the old ImageMagick script could do (including the extra features I explained over there), and a fair bit more.

I've updated the program description in the opening post accordingly, and made everything a little easier to follow along.

I hope, everyone has fun making some cool new signatures now.

A new version (ver.1.18) is now available on GitHub.

I've added shadow and glow options to the text layers. So you can now go all out with neon-style text:

 

Also, you can now effectively recreate the style that I'm using in my current signature (that was based on a heavily modified version of the old Imagemagick script):

Although you'd need the corresponding fonts (which unfortunately are not free to share). With the included fonts, you can get pretty close, though:

 

Further, you can now select from a few different aspect ratios (apart from the usual square) to import your photos in. (Although you'll have to import them again if you decide to change the aspect ratio mid-edit.)

There's a few options for both landscape...

... and portrait layout.

 

This should fulfil most signature generating needs, although I still have a few ideas for features to add. So stay tuned!

I'm currently running tests for a new version of the signature generator.

One of the new features I'm trying out is the ability to directly import photos from your dolls' Doll Directory entries (based on @Poofiemus' original idea). - Although the process isn't perfectly smooth (yet?). Since user profiles (and their doll lists) are usually not accessible unless you're logged in, I can't just pass a username to the program and grab all the related dolls. (Something like that should be possible with an API call, but I don't have enough programming experience that I think I'd be able to pull that off in a secure way.)

The version I'm testing right now, requires you to keep a text file with the links to all of your doll profiles like this:

Since the doll profiles are public, the program can go through these links and download the names and photos for the listed dolls. You'll have to add the links once, but even if you change the photos in the profile later, the program will always be able to grab the up-to-date photos.

 

I'd like to hear you people's opinion. Does that sound too clunky? A version that works just with your profile link might be possible if you set your profile to public for the time that you're running the program.

Are people even interested in this particular functionality? If you have your doll photos stored locally, a batch import with "scan folder" will always be faster.

I also wouldn't mind to hear from the mods/admin. I don't want to release something that then allows people to hammer the forum's server. - Although, given the modest popularity of this program so far, and the fact that people will have to compile the list of links for themselves (I will not put any automated default links to DollDreaming into the source code or the release), probably limits the risk. It's also not particularly fast since the program is editing the photos right after download. During my testing it was usually pulling about one or two images per second.

Any feedback is appreciated. - And stay tuned for the new version.

Big update: A new version (ver.2.09) is now available on GitHub.

With this release we finally have a Mac version available, too. (It's built for Intel CPU, so if you're on Apple Silicon, use Rosetta2.)

Apart from a good amount of streamlining, you can now manually adjust the zoom and crop if you don't like how the program automatically crops your doll photos. You can do that with individual images or apply the custom crop to all images of that size.

The photo import from the Doll Directory is also included as described in the above post.

With this version, the program has all the main features that I wanted it to have. I'll probably still play around with it and add new functionality in the future. Let me know if you have any fun ideas, too.

Note:  I'm trying to update the opening post with the new information, but the server keeps giving me errors. - The usual trouble...
I'll update it as soon as possible. Don't be surprised if the opening post looks a bit broken for a while.
Edit: Managed to update the opening post.

For good measure, here's a couple more sample signatures to give you some inspiration for your own:

 

 

Edited January 20 by Tierparkzone