http://forum.meleegaming.com/guides/guide-how-do-i-make-a-banner-for-my-clan-(with-a-fairly-easy-premade-template!)/Most everything you'll want to know is in that thread, but I will elaborate a bit.
To design a banner you need an image editing software. Photoshop is the best one, so if you have access to it I would use that. If however you are poor like me then
http://www.getpaint.net/ or
http://www.gimp.org/ are to decent free alternatives (I myself use paint).
Once you have that you'll need to choose what image you want to use. I'll pick a cross potent as an example.
Now you need to open it with your imaging software and re-size it or otherwise adjust it so that it will fit on a banner 132x340 pixels (the banner size for cRPG). In the case of our cross potent I'm going to to go with 81x81 pixels so that there will be ample room on the sides and so it will look better on heraldic armors.
Next you'll want to pick what color you want the background to be. First create a new image in your editing software that has the dimensions 132x340, then using the fill color option make the background the color you want. For our example I will use a nice dark red.
Now you will want to go back to your re-sized image and using a selection tool select all of the image, then copy it. Now go back to your background and paste in
as a new layer . This will allow you to adjust where the re-sized image sits on the banner so you can center it. Once you are satisfied with the centering merge the two layers together (the option should be in a little layer box).
Now to add a bit of shading and texture to the banner you will need a template file. You can copy and paste this one here:
Now open this, select all, and copy it in as a new layer just like you did with your re-sized image. There should somewhere be an option to adjust the opacity of the template layer. Look for something called layer properties or opacity. Adjust it till you are satisfied.
Now you have a banner! Yay!
To get your banner into the game you must first buy a banner slot at auction (and you must be in a clan when you do it). They usually go for around 100-150k these days. Once you've got the banner and the banner slot all you have to do is be the clan leader and on the clan page it will have a banner customization option. To get the correct hex code (color code) for the back of your heraldic armor simply use a color picker in your image editing software and copy the hex (if it does not show a hex try clicking more options or something akin to that).
Apologies if that was too dumb-downed. Hopefully it was at least helpful.
A couple key things to remeber:
- Warband does not do detail in banners. If you want something clean looking keep it simple.
- There are technically banner rules, and if you have a bad banner for to long it may get purged. So be wary (cmp is really inconsistent with it though).
- Colors do not always show up in game as you think they would, so some trial and error may be necessary.
- If you are new to image editing you may want to just dink around learning all the buttons for awhile. There are also some good YouTube guides for most software. The Google is our friend.