Create A Portrait From Text In Photoshop

Create A Portrait From Text In Photoshop


Written By Steve Patterson
In this Photoshop tutorial, we'll learn how to create a
text portrait effect. In other words, we'll create the illusion that the
image seen in the photo is actually being created by multiple lines of
type. I've seen this effect used with many celebrity photos, from Andy
Warhol and Marilyn Monroe to Michael Jackson, David Beckham, even Barack
Obama. Of course, you don't need a photo of someone famous to create
this effect. In fact, the more you know about the person in the photo,
the more interesting the effect can become because you can add more
personalized text. You may want to write about what the person in the
photo means to you, or share a funny story, or describe something
they've accomplished. Or, you can just grab some random text from
somewhere and paste it in. It's completely up to you.
I'll be using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial, but any
version of Photoshop should work. Here's the image I'll be starting
with:

The original image

Here's how it will look after we've cropped it and then
converted it to text:

The final "text portrait" effect.



Let's get started!
Step 1: Crop The Image Around The Person's Face


Before we begin, I should mention that you'll probably want
to work on a copy of your photo for this effect rather than on the
original image, since the first thing we'll be doing is cropping some of
it away. To save a copy of the image, go up to the File
menu at the top of the screen and choose Save As. Give
the document a different name, such as "text-portrait-effect" or
whatever makes sense to you, and save it as a Photoshop .PSD file. This
way, you can do whatever you like to the image and not worry about
damaging the original.
Let's begin by cropping the image so we get a nice close-up
view of the person's face. Photoshop's official tool for cropping
images is the Crop Tool, but for simple crops like this, you'll often
find that the Rectangular Marquee Tool is all you
really need. I'm going to grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the top
of the Tools panel (panels are called "palettes" in earlier versions of
Photoshop). I could also press the letter M on my keyboard to select it
with the shortcut:

The Rectangular Marquee Tool works
great for simple crops.

Then, with the Rectangular Marquee Tool selected, I'll
click and drag out a selection around the man's face, beginning in the
top left and dragging towards the bottom right. If you need to
reposition your selection as you're dragging it, hold down your spacebar,
drag the selection to a new location with your mouse, then release your
spacebar and continue dragging out the selection. I want my selection
to be a perfect square, so I'll hold down my Shift key
as I'm dragging, which will force the shape of the selection into a
square. When you're done, you should have a selection that looks
something like this:

Everything outside of the selection
will be cropped away in a moment.

With the selection in place, go up to the Image
menu in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen and
select the Crop command:

Go to Image > Crop.

As soon as you select the Crop command, Photoshop crops
away everything outside of the selection outline, leaving us with our
close-up portrait:

Only the area inside the selection
remains.

Step 2: Add A New Blank Layer


If we look in our Layers panel (palette), we see that we
currently have just one layer in our Photoshop document. This layer,
named Background, is the layer that contains our image. We need
to add a new blank layer above the Background layer, and we can do that
by clicking on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the
Layers panel:

Click on the New Layer icon in the
Layers panel (palette).

Nothing will seem to have happened in the document window,
but the Layers panel is now showing a new layer sitting above the
Background layer. Photoshop automatically names the new layer "Layer 1".
If we look in the layer's preview thumbnail to the
left of the layer's name, we see a gray and white checkerboard pattern.
This is how Photoshop represents transparency, and since the preview
window is filled with nothing but this checkerboard pattern, we know the
layer is currently blank (transparent):

The preview thumbnail for each layer
shows us what's currently on the layer.

Step 3: Fill The New Layer With Black


Next, we need to fill our new layer with black. Go up to
the Edit menu at the top of the screen and select the Fill
command:

Select the Fill command from the Edit
menu.

This brings up Photoshop's Fill dialog box, giving us an
easy way to fill a layer or a selection with either a solid color or a
pattern. Since we no longer have a selection active on the layer, the
entire layer will be filled with whatever color we choose. Select Black
from the list to the right of the word Use in the Contents
section at the top of the dialog box:

Choose Black for the fill color.

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box and Photoshop fills
"Layer 1" with black. Since "Layer 1" is sitting above the Background
layer, our image is now blocked from view in the document window by the
fill color:

The photo temporarily disappears
behind the solid black color.




Next up, we'll add our text!

Step 4: Select The Type Tool


We're ready to add our text. We'll need Photoshop's Type
Tool for that, so select it from the Tools panel, or press the
letter T on your keyboard to quickly select it with
the shortcut:

Any time you want to add text to a
Photoshop document, you'll need the Type Tool.

Photoshop gives us the option to add either point
type or area type to our documents. Point type
is your basic single line of text, usually either a heading or a short
caption. Adding point type is as easy as clicking with the Type Tool at
the point in the document where you want the line of text to appear and
then adding your text. As long as the text you're adding is short enough
that you're not worried about it extending out beyond the edge of the
document, point type is usually the way to go.
Area type, on the other hand, is used when you have large
amounts of text, say one or more paragraphs, and you need to make sure
that all of the text stays within the boundaries of the document or
within a certain area of the document. Since we need to fill our entire
document with text, we'll need to use area type.
To add area type, we first need to define the boundaries
for the text, and we do that by dragging out a text frame,
which looks very similar to the same sort of basic selection we dragged
out earlier with the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Once we have the text
frame in place, any text we add will be confined within the frame.
With the Type Tool selected, click in the very top left
corner of the document, then drag down to the very bottom right corner
of the document so that the text frame covers the entire document area
when you're done. As you drag, you'll see the outline of your text
frame appearing. Just as when dragging out a selection with the
Rectangular Marquee Tool, you can reposition the text frame as you're
dragging it out if needed by holding down your spacebar,
dragging the frame to a new location, then releasing your spacebar and
continuing to drag. When you're done, release your mouse button and you
should see your text frame surrounding the entire document, although it
may be a little difficult to see in the small screenshot:

Any text we add will now be confined
within the boundaries of the document thanks to the text frame.

Step 5: Select Your Font Options In The Options Bar


Now that we have our text frame in place, we can add our
text. Before we do though, we'll need to choose which font we want to
use. Any time the Type Tool is selected, the Options Bar
at the top of the screen will show various options for working with
text in Photoshop, including options for choosing a font, font style,
font size, text color, and so on. The exact fonts you have to choose
from will depend on whichever ones you currently have installed on your
computer. You'll probably need to experiment a few times with this since
the font you choose, especially the font size, will have a large
impact on the overall look of the effect. To preserve as much detail in
the portrait as possible, you'll want to use a small font size. Of
course, the smaller the font, the more text you'll need to add to fill
up the entire document area.
I'm going to stick with something simple, like Arial Black,
and I'll choose 12 pt for my font size to keep it small enough to
maintain lots of detail in the portrait:

Select your font, style and size from
the Options Bar.

We'll need our text color to be white, so if yours is
currently set to some other color, click on the color swatch
in the Options Bar, which will bring up Photoshop's Color
Picker, and choose white. Click OK when you're done to exit out
of the Color Picker. The color swatch in the Options Bar should now be
filled with white:

Click on the color swatch in the
Options Bar and select white from the Color Picker if your text color is
not already set to white.

Step 6: Add Your Text To The Document


All we need to do now is to add the text. As I mentioned at
the beginning of the tutorial, you can personalize the text portrait
effect by writing something specific about the person in the photo, or
you can simply copy and paste enough text from somewhere to fill up the
document. Since I'm using a stock photo for this tutorial and I don't
actually know the person in the image (although I'm sure he's a nice guy
with lots of good stories to share), I'll simply add some standard
"lorem ipsum" page filler text. When you're done, you're entire document
should be filled with white text:

Add enough text to fill the entire
document from top to bottom.

To accept the text and exit out of text editing mode, click
on the small checkmark in the Options Bar:

Click on the checkmark in the Options
Bar to accept the text.



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Step 7: Add A Layer Mask To The Type Layer


To turn our Photoshop document full of text into our text
portrait effect, we'll need to add a layer
mask to the text layer. If we look in the Layers panel, we
see that we now have three layers, with our text layer sitting above
the other two layers. We know that it's a text layer because the layer's
preview thumbnail shows a capital letter T in the center of it. To add a
layer mask to the layer, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of
the Layers panel:

Make sure the text layer is selected
(highlighted in blue) in the Layers panel, then click on the Layer Mask
icon.

Nothing will happen yet in the document window, but a layer
mask thumbnail will appear to the right of the layer's preview
thumbnail:

Layer masks are filled with white by
default, which means everything on the layer is fully visible in the
document.

Step 8: Copy The Original Photo On The Background Layer


We're now going to create our effect by copying and pasting
the portrait photo directly into the layer mask we just added. Click on
the Background layer in the Layers panel to select it.
You'll see it become highlighted in blue, telling us that it's now the
currently selected layer:

Layer masks are filled with white by
default, which means everything on the layer is fully visible in the
document.

Press Ctrl+A (Win) / Command+A
(Mac) to quickly select the entire layer. You'll see a selection
outline appear around the edges of the document, indicating that the
entire layer is now selected. Even though we can still see our white
text against the solid black fill color in the document window, we're
actually selecting the contents of the Background layer because that's
the layer we currently have selected in the Layers panel. Then, press
Ctrl+C (Win) / Command+C (Mac) to copy the
contents of the layer (the portrait photo) temporarily into your
computer's memory.
Step 9: Paste The Photo Directly Into The Layer Mask


Hold down your Alt (Win) / Option
(Mac) key and click on the layer mask thumbnail on the
text layer in the Layers panel:

Click on the layer mask thumbnail
while holding down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac).

By holding down Alt / Option as we click on the layer mask
thumbnail, not only do we select the layer mask, we make it visible
inside the document window, allowing us to paste our image directly into
it. Since the mask is currently filled with white, your document window
will appear filled with white. Press Ctrl+V (Win) / Command+V
(Mac) to paste the portrait photo directly into the layer mask. Since
layer masks deal only with black, white and shades of gray, the image
will appear as a black and white image in the document window:

The image has now been pasted directly
into the layer mask on the text layer.

To exit out of the layer mask and switch our view back to
normal in the document window, simply hold down Alt
(Win) / Option (Mac) once again and click on the layer
mask thumbnail, just as we did a moment ago. Notice that the
portrait photo is now visible inside the layer mask thumbnail:

Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) and
click again on the layer mask thumbnail to exit out of the layer mask.

Press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D
(Mac) to remove the selection outline from around the edges of the
document window. We're now back to our normal view mode inside the
document, and the text is now being masked by the photo that we pasted
directly into the layer mask, creating our "text portrait" effect:

The text is now being masked by the
photo.

We'll see how to quickly fine tune the text portrait effect
next!

Step 10: Duplicate The Type Layer


If you're happy with the results at this point, you can
skip these last couple of steps, but if you find that the effect looks a
little too dark, make sure the text layer is selected in the Layers
panel, then press Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J
(Mac) to quickly duplicate the layer. A copy of the text layer will
appear above the original:

You can also copy layers by going up
to the Layer menu, choosing New, then choosing Layer via Copy, but the
keyboard shortcut is much faster.

The image will now appear brighter:

The effect appears brighter after
duplicating the text layer.

Step 11: Adjust The Layer Opacity To Fine Tune The
Brightness


If you find that the effect is still too dark, simply
duplicate the text layer a second time. Or, if you find that it's now a
bit too bright, you can fine tune the results by lowering the layer's
opacity. You'll find the Opacity option at the top of
the Layers panel. The lower you set the opacity of the top layer, the
more you allow the layers below it to show through, which in this case
will have the effect of darkening the image. I'm going to lower the
opacity of my copied text layer down to around 65% just to darken the
effect slightly:

Reduce the top layer's opacity to fine
tune the brightness of the effect.

And with that, we're done! Here, after adjusting the
brightness with the Opacity option, is my final "text portrait"
Photoshop effect:

The final "text portrait" effect.

And there we have it!

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