Written By Steve Patterson

In this Photoshop tutorial, we'll learn how to create a text portrait effect. In other words, we'll create the illusion that the image seen in the photo is actually being created by multiple lines of type. I've seen this effect used with many celebrity photos, from Andy Warhol and Marilyn Monroe to Michael Jackson, David Beckham, even Barack Obama. Of course, you don't need a photo of someone famous to create this effect. In fact, the more you know about the person in the photo, the more interesting the effect can become because you can add more personalized text. You may want to write about what the person in the photo means to you, or share a funny story, or describe something they've accomplished. Or, you can just grab some random text from somewhere and paste it in. It's completely up to you.

I'll be using Photoshop CS4 for this tutorial, but any version of Photoshop should work. Here's the image I'll be starting with:

Here's how it will look after we've cropped it and then converted it to text:

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Let's get started!

Step 1: Crop The Image Around The Person's Face

Before we begin, I should mention that you'll probably want to work on a copy of your photo for this effect rather than on the original image, since the first thing we'll be doing is cropping some of it away. To save a copy of the image, go up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose Save As. Give the document a different name, such as "text-portrait-effect" or whatever makes sense to you, and save it as a Photoshop .PSD file. This way, you can do whatever you like to the image and not worry about damaging the original.

Let's begin by cropping the image so we get a nice close-up view of the person's face. Photoshop's official tool for cropping images is the Crop Tool, but for simple crops like this, you'll often find that the Rectangular Marquee Tool is all you really need. I'm going to grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the top of the Tools panel (panels are called "palettes" in earlier versions of Photoshop). I could also press the letter M on my keyboard to select it with the shortcut:

Then, with the Rectangular Marquee Tool selected, I'll click and drag out a selection around the man's face, beginning in the top left and dragging towards the bottom right. If you need to reposition your selection as you're dragging it, hold down your spacebar, drag the selection to a new location with your mouse, then release your spacebar and continue dragging out the selection. I want my selection to be a perfect square, so I'll hold down my Shift key as I'm dragging, which will force the shape of the selection into a square. When you're done, you should have a selection that looks something like this:

With the selection in place, go up to the Image menu in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen and select the Crop command:

As soon as you select the Crop command, Photoshop crops away everything outside of the selection outline, leaving us with our close-up portrait:

Step 2: Add A New Blank Layer

If we look in our Layers panel (palette), we see that we currently have just one layer in our Photoshop document. This layer, named Background, is the layer that contains our image. We need to add a new blank layer above the Background layer, and we can do that by clicking on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

Nothing will seem to have happened in the document window, but the Layers panel is now showing a new layer sitting above the Background layer. Photoshop automatically names the new layer "Layer 1". If we look in the layer's preview thumbnail to the left of the layer's name, we see a gray and white checkerboard pattern. This is how Photoshop represents transparency, and since the preview window is filled with nothing but this checkerboard pattern, we know the layer is currently blank (transparent):

Step 3: Fill The New Layer With Black

Next, we need to fill our new layer with black. Go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and select the Fill command:

This brings up Photoshop's Fill dialog box, giving us an easy way to fill a layer or a selection with either a solid color or a pattern. Since we no longer have a selection active on the layer, the entire layer will be filled with whatever color we choose. Select Black from the list to the right of the word Use in the Contents section at the top of the dialog box:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box and Photoshop fills "Layer 1" with black. Since "Layer 1" is sitting above the Background layer, our image is now blocked from view in the document window by the fill color:

Next up, we'll add our text!

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