Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to transform a photo
of someone into a stunning portrait made only of words that are special to the person.
Open a photo of someone you'd like to use. It can be color or black and white. If it's in color,
desaturate it by pressing Ctrl+ Shift +U on Windows or Cmd + Shift + U on a Mac. We'll
make a Displacement Map of your subject in order to wrap the text around the contours of the face.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right of the Layers panel
and click "Duplicate Layer".
Click "New" and type in "Displacement". Then, click OK.
Since Displacement Maps work best when they're slightly blurred,
go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
I'll blur it 4 pixels, however, depending on the size and resolution of your document, you
may want to use a different blur amount. Give your image a similar degree of blur as this.
Then, click OK.
Go to File and "Save As".
Save it to your "Desktop" as a Photoshop PSD file
and click "Save".
Now, we can close the Displacement document, since we just saved it.
The next step is to isolate the face from the rest of the image.
To do this, we need to make
a selection around it. There are many ways to do this, however, for this example, I'll
use the Pencil Tool. If you want to use this tool as well, make your Pencil size small
and the Hardness: 100%. If your foreground and background colors aren't black and white,
respectively, press "D" on your keyboard. Click the Quick Mask icon, so we can draw
a quick mask. Draw around the perimeter of the face and shoulders and make sure there
are no gaps in the line.
Open your Paint Bucket Tool and make sure "Contiguous" is checked.
Click inside the quick mask to fill it in. If your entire canvas fills with the quick
mask, press Ctrl or Cmd + Z to undo the last step and carefully check your lines for gaps
or holes. Convert the quick mask into a selection by pressing "Q" on your keyboard. Invert the
selection by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + I. To refine the selection around the hair,
go to Select and Refine Edge. I did an in-depth tutorial on the Refine Edge feature, so to
save time, I won't be going over all the details here. Check "Smart Radius" and drag the Radius
to the right until you start seeing a little variance along the edges. If you want to refine
it even more, brush over the outer edges of the hair around the head. If it's too much,
undo the last step.
Output it as a "New Layer with Layer Mask". Then, click OK.
Notice, we now have a new layer with a layer mask made from the selection.
To make a new layer below the active layer,
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click on the New Layer icon.
We'll fill the empty layer with black
and since black is the foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
We want to brush black over the shoulders to create a soft vignette.
Do this, click the layer
mask to make it active and open your Brush Tool. Make its size large with a Hardness
of 0%. Carefully brush over the shoulders making sure you don't cover the chin of your subject.
Next, we'll create the text part of your text portrait. If you want to use
lyrics, a poem or any other block of text, open it, highlight it and press Ctrl or Cmd
+ C to copy it. For this purpose, I like to use a website called, "Wordle.net". It creates
"word clouds" from text that you provide.
Click "Create", click inside the box and press Ctrl or Cmd + V to paste your text into it.
Then, click "Go".
Click "Language".
For this example, I'll make all the words upper-case,
however, you can choose whatever you want.
Click "Font". I'll use "Goudy Bookletter 1911".
Click "Layout" and tick "Straighter Edges". For this example,
I'll choose "Mostly Horizontal".
Click "Color" and click WB for White/Black.
Click "Open in Window" and then, maximize it.
To get your design into Photoshop, make a screenshot of
your entire design by pressing the PrtSc (Print Screen) key on the top of your keyboard if
you're using Windows or if you're on a Mac, press Cmd + Ctrl + 3. Minimize the Wordle
design window and your Browser windows.
Go to File and New. Click OK.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + V to paste your screenshot into it.
Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool and drag a selection
over the inside of the black background and be careful not to cut off any of your text.
Invert the selection and fill it with black. Then, deselect it.
Click the Channels tab.
If you don't see it, go to Window and Channels. At the bottom of the panel, click the small
dotted circle. This makes a selection of all the tonal values of your image.
Open back up your Layers panel.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer,
fill the selection with white and deselect it.
To get your white text design onto your subject,
press "v" to open your Move Tool and drag
it up onto the tab of your subject. Without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it own onto
the face and release.
Double-click on the thumbnail of your text design to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Drop Shadow". I'll make the Distance: 5 pixels and the Size:
5 pixels, however, depending of the size and resolution of your photo, you may want to
adjust these amounts. Then, click OK.
To save space in the Layers panel, click the small arrowhead next to the "fx" icon.
The text portrait will have better results when the
text is relatively small. To resize it, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T.
Go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press and hold Alt or Option
+ Shift as you drag it in. To reposition it, go inside the Transform and move it.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Make a copy of your text by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Reposition it over the face and make another copy.
Continue to make a few more copies and position them
over your document. We want to start rotating them 90 degrees clockwise. To do this, open
your Transform Tool, go to a corner and when your see a curved, double-arrow, press and
hold Shift as you rotate it clockwise 90 degrees. Pressing Shift snaps the transform to 45,
90 or 180 degrees. Then, press Enter or Return and position it. Continue to add text
blocks on your document. Let's place all the text into a folder. To do this, scroll down
to the bottom text layer and Shift-click on it to highlight all the layers between it
and the top, text layer. Then, press Ctrl or Cmd + G to group them into a folder. Make
a copy of the folder and go to Edit, Transform and "Rotate 90 degrees Counter Clockwise".
Position it, make another copy and position that. Continue to make copies and position
them over large empty areas. Let's group these folders into another folder using the same
steps as you did before.
We're going to reduce the size of all the text in the folder,
so open your Transform Tool again and press Ctrl or Cmd + 0 to see the Transform's entire bounding
box. Go to a corner, and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow,
press and hold Shift and drag it in approximately this much.
Move it in, but position it on the upper, left. Then, press Enter or Return. Make a copy of
the folder and move it to the lower, right.
Make another copy, open your Transform Tool,
rotate it clockwise and move it to the upper, right.
Make one more copy and position this one to the lower, left.
To fit it back on your canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
We'll convert all the text into a Smart Object,
so we can displace it using the displacement
map that we saved earlier. To do this, Shift-click on the bottom folder to highlight all the
folders and click the icon at the upper, right.
Click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Distort and Displace.
Displace the Horizontal and Vertical Scales: 10, "Stretch to Fit"
and "Repeat Edge Pixels". Then, click OK.
Click the Displacement file and click Open.
The text made a subtle, but important shift based on the displacement map's tonal values
of the face. Click off the eyeball next to the text to temporarily hide the layer.
Make a composite snapshot of your image
by first clicking the thumbnail of the face to make
it active and then, pressing Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E on Windows
or Cmd + Shift + Option + E on a Mac.
Hide the layer with the layer mask
and drag the composite snapshot to the top of the Layers panel.
Change its Blend Mode to Linear Burn and make your text visible.
Lastly, we'll brighten the portrait.
Click the Adjustment layer icon and click Levels.
Slide the Input white to the left to approximately 200.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!