Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to create a customized,
text portrait poster.
Open a photo of someone that you'd like to use for this project. I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
The first step is crop it tightly around the face and shoulders.
Open your Crop Tool and delete the amounts in the Width and Height fields.
Make the Resolution 150 pixels per inch and drag the bounding box to where you'd like your image cropped.
Then, click the check-mark at the top. To fit your image back onto your
canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0. Next, we'll make a selection around the subject to separate
it from its background. There are many ways to make selections and your choice should
depend on the characteristics of your photo. For this photo, I'll use the Pen Tool. I did
an in-depth tutorial showing how to use the pen tool. If you'd like to watch it, I provided
its link in this video's description. Once the path is complete, I'll right-click anywhere
directly on the path and choose, "Make Selection". I'll make the Feather Radius": 0 and click OK.
After you make your selection,
click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection .
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the New Layer icon to make a new layer below the active layer.
We'll fill it with black,
but first, if your foreground and background colors aren't black and white respectively,
press "D" on your keyboard. Since black is your foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
Click off the eyeball icon next your your subject to temporarily hide the
layer. We're ready to add text. Find some text you'd like to fill your portrait with.
For this image, I located one of my favorite prose poems, "Desiderata". Once you locate
your text, highlight all of it and press Ctrl or Cmd + C to copy it.
Open Notepad or another text editor
and press Ctrl or Cmd + V to paste your text into it. Edit the text, so there
are no paragraph spaces or other gaps.
To ensure that you removed all the spaces, drag the document to the right a bit.
Edit out any empty spaces and copy all the text.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and pick a font. I'm using "Arial Regular" because it's a font
that's easy to read in all sizes. I'll make the size temporarily 28 points, but you may
want to use a different amount depending on the size of your document. Make the Aliasing,
"Sharp", Center Alignment and white for its color. Go to a top corner and drag the text
bounding box to the opposite corner. Press Ctrl or Cmd + V to paste the text into it.
To adjust its size, as well as the space between the lines, highlight all your text and click
this icon to open your Character panel or you can go to Window and Character. Drag the
Size icon to the right or left.
Start with a relatively small size. To adjust the space
between your lines of text, drag the "Leading" icon to the left or right.
Adjust the Leading and the size, so your text is small and the Leading doesn't overlap.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + C to copy all your text.
Click just the right of the last character and press Ctrl of Cmd
+ V multiple times to fill your document with your text. Double-click the large "T" to highlight
all your text and click the box at the top to open the Text Color Picker. Pick Black
and click OK. Then, click the check-mark at the top. Make your subject visible and active.
To restrict the text to just inside your subject, we'll clip your subject to the text by making
it into a "Clipping mask". To do this,
press Ctrl + Alt + G on Windows or Cmd + Option + G on a Mac.
To adjust the size of your text, make the text layer active, click the Character
panel icon and drag the text size icon to the right or left. To adjust the space between
the lines of text, as before, drag the Leading icon.
Make your photo active and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click "Posterize"
Make the number of Levels: 2. To restrict the posterize effect to just the face,
click the "Clipping Mask" icon or, as before, press Ctrl + Alt + G on
Windows or Cmd + Option + G on a Mac.
Click the Adjustment layer icon again and this time, click "Black, White".
Lastly, we create a thin, white outline border framing our text portrait.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer. Fill it with any color. I'll
fill it with black. Reduce its Fill to 0. Doing this makes the content inside the layer
invisible, but it'll retain the full visibility of all the effects that we add to the layer.
Double-click its thumbnail to open the Layer Style window. Click "Inner Glow". The color
is white, the Blend Mode is Normal, the Opacity is 100% and the Source is Edge.
The Choke is 100%.
I'll make the Size 60 pixels, but you may want to adjust this amount based on
your document's size. Click "Stroke". The color is black and the Position is "Center".
Drag the Size slider to the left or right
until you see a thin white outline surrounding your portrait. Then, click OK.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!