You should have a very basic portrait made from black and 50% gray. Then, activate the shadow layer and use the Fill command again, except this time use Black with Preserve Transparency checked. Use 50% Gray, check the Preserve Transparency box, and click OK. Click on the midtones layer and from the Edit menu choose Fill. Then, press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to copy the selected pixels onto a new layer.Ĭlick the Eye icon next to the Background layer in the Layers panel to hide that layer from view. If (as in this example) some of the background is selected, use the Lasso tool (L) with the Option key (PC: Alt key) held down to circle the areas you don’t want selected. From the Select drop-down menu in the Color Range dialog, choose Midtones and click OK. Go back to the Select menu and choose Color Range again.

Click back on the Background layer in the Layers panel.

Press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to copy the selected pixels onto a new layer. Then, press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to copy the selected pixels onto a new layer. If parts of the background are selected in your photo, see the next step for removing those selected areas.) (In our example, nothing in the background was selected. From the Select drop-down menu in the Color Range dialog, choose Shadows and click OK. From the Select menu, choose Color Range. Name each brush in the Brush Name dialog and click OK. One at a time, draw a selection around each word with the Rectangular Marquee tool (M), and from the Edit menu, choose Define Brush Preset. Use the Type tool (T) to type several different words in various fonts and sizes (in this case we used a person’s name). Press D to set the Foreground color to black. For the best results, choose a photo that has a light background (or select the background around the person and make it lighter).Ĭreate a new document (File>New) in a size that’s smaller than your photo: the specifics don’t really matter. I’ve had the best success with straight-on head and shoulder shots, but again, feel free to experiment with all types of photos. Pick a portrait that offers good contrast-a photo that’s very dramatic and dark probably won’t work as well. In this issue, we’re going to take a portrait and replace the person’s image with text (think 2009 Grammy posters). I love Photoshop techniques that offer all kinds of possibilities for experimentation-and the following tutorial is a perfect example of one of those techniques.

Cs4 photoshop