Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create the powerful image of projected text onto a face.
Open a sharp, close-up of a face.
I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
I like the background to be black, but it's not essential.
If you do want to make the background black, we need to make a selection around our subject.
I did many tutorials showing how to do this, so to save time, I won't be going over them here,
however, I did provide links to two of my in-depth tutorials of Refine Edge and
Select and Mask that will walk you through the process of making perfect selections.
Once you make the selection, click the layer mask icon to make a layer mask next to your subject.
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're not black and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
Since black is our foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
Make your subject active and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click, "Black & White".
You can keep the default preset, which simply desaturates the color to its unaltered grayscale
tones or you can choose one of the other presets to give your subject a good balance of highlights,
midtones and shadows.
I'm choosing "High Contrast Blue Filter" for this example.
Whatever filter you do choose, don't be concerned with the tone of the irises of the eyes for now.
As soon as we added the Black and White adjustment layer, your foreground and background colors
most likely inverted.
We need to revert them back, so black is the foreground color.
To do this, either press "x" on your keyboard or click this icon.
Open your Brush Tool and Brush Picker.
Pick a soft, round brush.
Make its size relatively small and its Hardness: 0%.
Its Opacity and Flow are both 100%.
Brush over the irises, which reveals them through the layer mask.
We'll convert our visible image into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, Shift-click the bottom layer to make all the layers active
and click the icon at the upper, right.
Click, "Convert to Smart Object".
We'll prepare this image to be our displacement map, which will warp our text to conform to
the tonal ranges of our subject's face, thereby making the text seem as if it's wrapping itself
around the contours of the face.
Since displacement maps look best when they're blurred, go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 2 pixels.
Click the icon again to open the fly-out list and this time, click "Duplicate Layer".
When you see this window, click "New" and type in "Displacement".
Go to File and "Save As".
Save it to your Desktop for quick & easy access and save it as a Photoshop PSD document.
Then, click "Save".
Open back your document and open the History panel.
If you don't see it, go to Window and History.
Scroll to the bottom and click "Convert to Smart Object", which was the step just before we blurred it.
Make a copy of the layer by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Temporarily hide the copy and make the original active.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click, "Levels".
In the Input Midtones field, type in 0.58 and in the Input Highlights field, type in 244.
In the Output Highlights field, type in 112.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and pick a font.
I find that relatively large, thick fonts work the best.
I'm using "Tw Cen MT Condensed Extra Bold".
If you'd like to use it, I provided its link, as well.
I'll make its size, 35 points, but feel free to adjust the amount based on the font you
choose, the amount of characters in your text and the size & resolution of your document.
Click the "Center Alignment" icon and press "x" to invert your colors, so white is the foreground color.
Click on the center of the subject's forehead and type out your text.
To adjust the space between the lines, known as "Leading", highlight all the lines
and click the "Character / Paragraph" icon or go to Window and Character.
Drag the "Leading" icon to the right or left to increase or decrease the space between your lines of text.
Open your Move Tool and drag your text to a location that’s slightly down and to the
right from where you'd like to see the displaced text.
I'll explain why in a moment.
We can close the Character/Paragraph panels now.
Convert your text into a Smart Object and go to Filter, Distort and Displace.
We'll displace the Horizontal and Vertical Scales 10 pixels each, which will warp it
up and to the left by 10 pixels.
Tick "Stretch to Fit" and "Repeat Edge Pixels".
Click the Displacement file that you saved earlier and click "Open".
Immediately, our text looks as if it's warped around the contours of the face.
Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 2 pixels.
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click your text to make a selection of it.
Hide the text layer and make the top subject visible and active.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the subject.
If you'd like to brighten your overall image, click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Levels".
Drag the Input Highlight slider to the left to brighten it.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!