Photoshop CS5 – Text Art – make an image out of lines of text

This tutorial will show you how to turn an image into  text art. we will be using 3 colors which utilize
highlights, midtones, and shadows to give depth to your text art.
Follow along and watch magic take place.

Step 1 – Open an image you want to turn into text art.
Lets make it black and white by going to
Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2 - Select the type tool and change your  font color to white.
Click and drag to make a text box the same size as your image.
Type a line of the word or words you wish to use. select the line you just made
and hit Ctrl C to copy, Click at the end of the line and press enter to move to the next line
Hit Ctrl V to paste. Keep hitting enter and pasting until your image is covered in text like below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3 - Right click (or Ctrl Click on Mac) on your text layer and select
Duplicate Layer. Right click again and duplicate layer a second time.
Select the first copy layer, and with the text tool select all the text by clicking
in the text and hitting Ctrl A (Select All). change your font color to a medium
Grey. Now select the 2nd text layer copy repeating the same process selecting the text
but this time change the font color to Black. Your layer should resemble mine below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I renamed the text  layers to illustrate the step.

Step 4 – Hide your text layers by clicking on the eyeball beside each of them.
Select the image Layer (mines background) and go to
Select > Color Range. From the select drop-down menu
choose Shadows. Which gives you a selection (dancing ants) of the shadows of
your image.
Now show your black text layer and select that layer.
at the bottom of the layers panel click on the layer mask button.
This makes the black text show up only on the shadows of the image like so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 5 - Now We repeat the process for the midtones of your image.
Hide your text layers .
Select the image Layer (mines background) and go to
Select > Color Range. From the select drop-down menu
choose Midtones. Which gives you a selection (dancing ants) of the midtones of
your image.
Now show your Grey text layer and select that layer.
at the bottom of the layers panel click on the layer mask button.
This makes the Grey text show up only on the Midtones of the image.

Step 6 - let’s now repeat this process for the Highlights of your image.
Hide your text layers .
Select the image Layer (mines background) and go to
Select > Color Range. From the select drop-down menu
choose Highlights. Which gives you a selection (dancing ants) of the Highlights of
your image.
Show your White text layer and select that layer.
at the bottom of the layers panel click on the layer mask button.
This makes the White text show up only on the Highlights of the image.

Image so far:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to change the color of the background to make the words
stand out more select the image layer and create a new layer
(Ctrl shift N) and fill it with a color of your choice. (shift F5) or edit > Fill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Optionally, if you want the text to only show up on your subject,
Select the  text layers mask that  flows into the background
using the brush with black as your foreground color, paint on your
image wherever you want to hide the text.

My final result:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Try these techniques on a variety of subjects, like maybe a pig:

–Thanks for reading my tutorial, feel free to ask any questions
in the comments section.

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