Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create a powerful, portrait poster made of text.
This is an update of tutorials I've done years ago on earlier versions of Photoshop.
This update is more streamlined and flexible.
Before we begin, if you're not already a subscriber to Blue Lightning TV, click that "Subscribe"
button to let you know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials.
Open a photo of someone that you'd like to use for this project.
I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
The first step is to make a selection around your subject, so we can separate it from its background.
There are many ways to do this, but for this example, I'll use the Quick Selection Tool.
If you're using this tool as well on versions earlier that CC 2018,
drag the tool over the subject to select it.
To remove areas outside the subject, press and hold Alt or Option as you drag over those areas.
If you're using CC 2018 or later, just press the "Select Subject" button, which automatically
analyzes the entire image and selects its prominent subject or subjects.
To refine its soft or feathery edges, go to Select.
If you're using aversion earlier than CC 2015.5, click Refine Edge.
If you're using a later version, click "Select and Mask".
If you prefer to use Refine Edge, Shift-click "Select and Mask".
I did in-depth tutorials on both of these filters, so if you want to watch them, I provided
their links in the description below this video.
Check "Smart Radius".
This detects smooth and hard edges.
Drag the Radius a bit to the right.
To adjust your brush's size, first make sure your CapsLock key is off and press the right
or left bracket key on your keyboard.
Brush over soft or feathery areas to refine their edges.
Check "Decontaminate Colors" to prevent the background color from appearing along the
edges of our subject.
For this particular effect, drag the amount all the way to 100%.
Output it to a "New Layer".
We'll make a new layer below the active layer by Ctrl-clicking or Cmd-clicking the New Layer icon.
We'll fill it with black, but before we do, check your foreground and background colors.
If they aren't black and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
Since black is our foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
Make the cut-out subject active and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click "Black & White".
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the subject to make a selection of its shape.
Go to Select and "Save Selection".
When you see this window, just click OK to save it.
Then, deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. The selection is now saved in our Channels panel.
We'll use it later.
Next, we'll make our visible image into a displacement map, which will make our text
look like its wrapping itself around the contours of the face.
First, create a new document of our visible image by clicking the icon at the upper, right
of the Layers panel and clicking "Duplicate Layer".
Open the document "Destination" list and click "New".
Type in "Displacement".
Notice, we now have a new document named, "Displacement".
Remove all its color by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + U.
Since displacement maps look best when they're blurred a bit, go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
I'll blur it 6 pixels, but you may have to adjust this amount for your image depending
on its size and resolution.
Go to File and "Save As".
Save it your Desktop for easy access as a Photoshop PSD file and click "Save".
If you see this message, just click OK.
Since we saved it onto our Desktop, it's okay to close the document.
Next, we'll create a "word cloud", which is the text that we'll use to fill our portrait.
A word cloud is essentially an image composed of words, in which the size of each word indicates
its frequency or importance.
For this example, I'll use these lyrics to a song by the Rolling Stones.
Once you find the text you want, press Ctrl or Cmd + A to select all the text or you can
drag your cursor over it to highlight it.
Then, press Ctrl or Cmd + C to copy the highlighted text.
Open a Browser and in the URL field, type in "wordle.net".
Just as a side note, Wordle's website did have problems being able to open in a number
of Browsers, but they've addressed this issue and now offers a desktop version that you
can download onto your computer.
I prefer over their web version.
Just click the one for Windows or for Macs.
Once you install it, open it.
Make sure the "Your Text" window is open.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + v to paste the text that you copied earlier.
Click "Language".
I'll make all of my words upper-case and I'll tick "remove common English words", like "the" and "a".
Click "Font".
I'll pick "Steelfish", but pick any font you want.
Click "Layout".
I'll choose "Straighter Edges" and "Half and Half",
which means half of my words will be horizontal and half vertical.
Click "Color".
Click "WB", which is white text over a black background.
Click "Exact Palette Colors", which will keep our text pure white on black.
Click "Go" and "Save as PNG".
Save it to your Desktop and click "Save".
Go to File and Open.
Click the word cloud you created and click "Open".
Open your Channels panel.
If you don't see it, go to Window and Channels.
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the RGB thumbnail to make a selection of the text.
Open back the Layers panel and press Ctrl or Cmd + J to cut and copy the text onto its own layer.
Press "v" to open your Move Tool and drag your text onto the tab of your subject.
Without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down and release.
To resize and position it, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. Go to a corner.
If you're using a version earlier than CC 2019, press and hold Alt or Option + Shift
as you drag it out or in.
If you're using CC 2019 or later, just press Alt or Option as you drag it.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Double-click the text layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Drop Shadow".
The Blend Mode is Normal, the color is black and the opacity is approximately 60%.
The Angle is approximately 145 degrees.
I'll make the Distance: 5 pixels and the Size is 4 pixels, however, depending on the size
and resolution of your document, you may want to adjust these amounts.
The Contour is Linear.
Drag it to a corner and make a copy of it.
Drag the copy over and open your Transform Tool.
Go to a corner and press and hold Shift as you rotate it clockwise 90 degrees.
To reposition it, go inside the text and drag it.
It's okay to overlap the text.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Make another copy and drag it to another position.
Continue making copies and postioning and rotating them until they fill your document.
We'll place all of the text layers into a folder.
Scroll to the bottom text layer and Shift-click it to highlight all of the text layers.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + G. Make a copy of the folder and open back your Transform Tool.
Rotate it 90 degrees clockwise.
We’ll merge the two folders by Shift-clicking the bottom folder to make it active as well,
and pressing Ctrl or Cmd + E. Since some of our text extends beyond our visible document,
we need to crop it off, otherwise, our displacement map won’t be aligned with our text.
To do this, press Ctrl or Cmd + A to select the boundaries of our visible document and
go to Image and Crop.
Then, deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D.
We’ll convert it into a Smart Object, so we can displace it nondestructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right corner and click “Convert to Smart Object”.
Go to Filter, Distort and Displace.
I’ll displace it 20 pixels, but you may want to adjust this amount depending on your
document’s size and resolution.
Tick “Stretch to Fit” and “Repeat Edge Pixels”.
Open your Desktop, locate the displacement map, click it and click, “Open”.
To tidy up the Layers panel, let’s collapse the Smart Filter.
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the text to make a selection of its shape.
Hide the layer and make the subject active.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the subject.
Hide the text layer.
We'll jump the text layer to the top of the Layers panel by making it active and pressing
Ctrl or Cmd and the right bracket key on your keyboard.
Click the Black and White adjustment layer to make it active.
Scroll down and Shift-click the black layer to make all of the layers in-between active.
Convert them all into one Smart Object.
Make the text layer active and make a copy of it.
Make the bottom text active and press Ctrl or Cmd and the left bracket key to jump this
layer below the subject.
Make it visible and make the subject active.
Change its Blend Mode to Linear Burn.
Make the top text layer visible and active.
Reduce its opacity to 15%.
Open the Channels panel and Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the head shape that you saved earlier
to make a selection of its shape.
Open back the Layers panel.
We'll make an inverted layer mask next to the top text layer
by Alt-clicking or Option-clicking the Layer Mask icon.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching.