Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to replace the famous
Hollywood sign with your own text! I provided a template so you can follow along. Its link is in
my video's description or project files. Once you open it, you'll see a photo of the Hollywood sign,
the same photo without the sign and a folder that includes the frames that support the sign.
I included 3 different sizes that will accommodate characters with varied widths. I also provided the
link to the font that matches closely to the one used for the Hollywood sign. Before we begin,
if you want to know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials, smash that "Subscribe"
button and please remember to click "Like" if you like this video. The first step is to make
a selection of the area of the hill where the bottom of the sign is hidden behind the stones
and shrubbery. To do this, first, check your foreground and background colors. If they're not
black and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard. Black should be our foreground color.
Open your Pencil Tool and Pencil Picker. Pick a hard, round tip. Make its size 10 pixels and its
hardness and opacity both 100%. We'll zoom into the sign by pressing "z" to open our Zoom Tool and
dragging it over the sign. To reposition it on our canvas, press and hold the Space bar as we drag
the image. Press B to your Pencil Tool again and press Q to activate the Quick Mask. Draw over the
contours of the hill just below the characters. Feel free to continue drawing over the contours
to accommodate your text if it contains many characters. Continue to draw down...over...and
continue the line until you connect with the point from which the line began.
Open the Paint Bucket Tool and click inside the area to fill it with the quick mask. Press
"Q" to revert it into a selection. Go to Select, Modify and Feather.
Feather it 1 pixel. Go back to Select and Save Selection.
Just click OK . We'll use this selection later. Deselect it by pressing Ctrl + D on Windows or
Cmd + D on a Mac. Zoom back out by pressing Ctrl or Cmd and the Minus key on your keyboard. Open
your Horizontal Type Tool and Type Picker. Open the "SF Hollywood Hills" font I provided.
Make its size 95 points, the aliasing: Smooth, and it can be any alignment. If the color box isn't
white, click it and when the color picker opens, pick white. Click on your document, type out your
text and open your Move Tool. Drag your text to the top of the Layers panel and Shift-click the
frame folder to make it active, as well. Press Ctrl or Cmd + G to place them into a folder.
Open the folder and open the Channels panel. if you don't see it, go to Windows and Channels.
Ctrl or Cmd-click the thumbnail of "Alpha 1", which selects it. Open back the Layers panel
and click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the folder. Make the Base
layer visible and active. Reduce its opacity anywhere between 50 to 70%, so we can see the
original Hollywood sign under it. Click the text to make it active and drag it over the Hollywood
sign, so the bottom of your first character is aligned with the bottom of the first character
of the Hollywood sign. Go to Window and Character to open the Character panel. Double-click the text
layer to highlight all your text. To raise or lower a character, drag your cursor over that
character to highlight it and place your cursor over the Baseline Shift scrubby slider icon.
Drag your cursor to the right or left to raise or lower that character until the bottom of it
is aligned with the character under it. Do this for each character you want to raise or lower.
Now, we can close the Character panel. Open back your Move Tool. We'll convert
our text into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively. To do this, click the icon
at the upper, right and click "Convert to Smart Object". Go to Filter, Blur, and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it point 3 pixels. Then, click OK or press Enter or Return. Now that we have our text
positioned on the hill, make the Base layer active again and increase its opacity back to 100%.
Make the Frame folder visible and active. Shift-click the layer mask to temporarily hide
it. We can now see the frames that were hidden by the layer mask. Drag them above your text. Now,
re-activate the layer mask by Shift-clicking it. Open the Frame folder. Since the first character
of my text is wider than the others, I'll click the "Frame wide" layer to make it active.
I'll drag that frame to my first character. A quick note: If you find that your entire
background is being dragged instead of the frame, undo it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + "z" and uncheck
"Auto-Select". When Auto-Select is checked, wherever you click on the canvas, then that
layer is selected in the Layers panel. The width of any frame should be slightly narrower than the
character it's going behind. To adjust the frame's width, we'll press Ctrl or Cmd + T to open our
Transform Tool. Go to either side's middle anchor point, and press and hold Alt or Option + Shift
as you drag it out or in. Its height should be at the top of the character or just below it.
I'll use the middle width for the rest of the letters and the narrow
width for the exclamation marks. Activate the frame you want to use and, as before,
drag it into position. To make a copy of the frame for your next character, press Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Then drag that copy to the character it's going behind.
Make another copy for your next character that has a medium width and drag that copy over to
that character. Make more copies of that frame for the other characters that have medium widths.
I'll make the narrow frame active and move it over an exclamation mark. I'll use my Transform
Tool to adjust its width. I'll make copies of it to go behind the two other exclamation marks.
Next, we'll add a slight dimension to our characters.
Collapse the frame folder and make your text active. To save a little space, let's collapse
the smart filter. Make a copy of your text and double-click the original layer to open its Layer
Style window. Click "Color Overlay" and the color box. In the hexadecimal field, type in 1A0303.
Then, click OK on both windows or you could press Enter or Return twice. Collapse the effects and
make the frame folder active. Shift-click the top text layer to make it and the original text layer
active as well. Convert them into one Smart Object. Reduce its opacity to 75%
and hide the Base layer. We can now see the original Hollywood sign under our text, so we
can angle our text to the perspective of the sign. Open your Transform Tool. To see the Transform's
entire bounding box, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0. Go to the top, left corner, and press and hold Ctrl
or Cmd and the Shift key as you drag the corner in until it matches the angle of the
"H" in Hollywood. Go to the top, right corner, and repeat the same hot keys as you align your text to
the perspective of the original sign. Now, drag your text over the Hollywood sign. To accept it,
press Enter or Return or click the checkmark at the top. Make the Base layer visible and
increase its opacity back to 100%. Lastly, we'll cast a shadow of our new sign onto the
hill. Press "z" to open your Zoom Tool and drag it over your sign. Reposition it if you like.
Ctrl or Cmd-click the Smart Object of your sign with the frames behind it to select its shape.
We'll make a new layer below the active layer by Ctrl or Cmd-clicking the New Layer icon. We'll
fill the selection with black. If your foreground color isn t black, press D on your keyboard. To
fill the selection with the foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete. Then, deselect it.
Change its Blend Mode to Multiply and reduce its opacity to 80%. Go to Edit, Transform and Distort.
Go to the top middle anchor point and drag it down and over to simulate the angle of the shadow
that's being cast onto the stones and bushes on the hill. Convert the shadow into a Smart Object.
Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur. Blur it 2 pixels.
Go back to Filter, Distort and Zigzag. The Style is "Out from Center", the Amount is 65
and the Ridges is 5. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!