Photoshop Tutorial – Face Transform with Type

by Graphic Design, Photoshop, Tutorial

In this tutorial, written again by Violet Bag, you are going to learn how to change a normal and basic image of a little kid and transform his face so that it appears to be constructed with text.
There are fifteen easy to follow steps to complete this tutorial and should not take you any longer than 30 minutes to complete.

You can download the source file, including the .PSD file, here:

And this is the final image you will learn to create:

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 1

First we start by opening this Picture of the face of the kid below (source files).

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step2

We need to firstly resize the image so that it will work better with the parameters being used in this tutorial.
Go to Image > Image Size and apply the following settings:

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 3

Now that we have our image resized go to the bottom part of the layers panel and add an Adjustment Layer: Curves.
Click on the icon that is a half black and half white circle, as you can see below.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 4

We now need to merge the Picture and the adjustment layer. Convert the background layer into a normal layer and double click on it and hit OK.
Then select the kid layer and the adjustment layer and press CTRL + ALT + E. You will now have your merged layer.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 5

Add another layer and fill it with black.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 6

Grab the text tool and draw a rectangle that covers the entire image, as you can see below:

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 7

Start typing any text anything you want (this tut used Georgia, 8pt). What you need to do is select the paragraph mode to justified-center. Use the one that is selected in the picture below.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 8

Keep on typing until you cover the whole image with text…

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 9

Now add a layer mask to this type layer. Hit the icon that is on the bottom of the layers palette, the one that is a rectangle with a circle inside.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 10

Now you need to click on the little eye that you see beside the layers to make the first two layers invisible. Once you do that you should see the kid’s
face only, select that layer. Hit CTRL+ A to select the whole image, and then CTRL + C to copy the kid’s face.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 11

Now, pay atention here. ALT + Click on the layer mask thumbnail.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 12

You will now see that your image has turned to white. Now Hit CTRL + V (or go to Edit > Paste).
And the face of the kid should be pasted on the mask.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 13

What we are seeing now is the mask. If you press ALT and click on the mask layer thumbnail it will give you the chance to modify the mask, not
the image. You can do it any time and to go back to your image just click on any other layer.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 14

Now we need to put all layers visible:

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 15

You see, now we’re not seeing the mask anymore. As you can see the text has merged with the original image because of the mask.
Here’s what it looks like:

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 16

To make it a little brighter let’s duplicate the type layer and lower the opacity to 46%:

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

Step 17 – Finished

This is the final result.
Hope you’ve enjoyed it and if you have any questions let me know. See ya.

Photoshop Tutorial Face with Type

The Author

Paola has been the author of todays tutorial, she is also known as Violet Bag and you can visit here website, Violetbag.com to view some of her awesome works and some more tutorials.

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Author: (569 Posts)

Paul Andrew is the editor and founder of Speckyboy Design Magazine. You can follow Speckyboy on Twitter, on Facebook, on Digg or you can subscribe via RSS.

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  • http://www.telefontraining-claudiafischer.de TelefoNina

    I’ve seen such photos before but never thought it might be that easy to make! Read this tutorial and got it instantly. Thank you, great tutorial!

  • http://www.edgarleijs.nl Edgar Leijs

    A simple but very effective tutorial! Thanks for sharing :)

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  • http://www.joserey101.com.ar José Rey

    it´s incredible that tutorial, thank´s very much
    José from argentina
    @joerey101

  • http://violettuts.wordpress.com/ Violet Bag

    Thanks! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it.

  • http://www.foxyhare.com Bryce Wisekal

    Fantastic tutorial although needs to be noted that this tutorial is only good for quality black and white photos.

    While this may work with complete ease with this one photo provided, its not as easy editing a photo that isn’t suitable or perfect for this project.

    There cannot be white lighting in the background of the image. Images with shadows will work the best.

  • http://www.neatothemes.com Neato Themes

    Clever, you are

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  • http://balgle.designerteam.info/ Beth McLain

    Absolutely awesome..

    Nice Trick

  • Sam

    absolutely awesome! when i first saw the image i thought ‘way beyond my elementary photoshop skills’ but i was wrong!!
    Thanx a million for posting.

  • http://nickburd.com Nick Burd

    This was a pretty good article. I love this type of design. It allows you to use typography in a different way.

    Can we expect more posts like this?

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  • http://www.poparted.co.uk Custom pop art

    Great post. Very effective.

  • http://www.indogen.com Rahul

    Beautiful tutorial and easy to follow.

  • http://dedenm06.student.ipb.ac.id deden

    thank you.. it’s amazing…

  • http://tigredelapaz.blogspot.com Gevalher

    Simple and effective and… Nice!!!

    Thanks very much

    Gary A. Valenzuela
    from La Paz, Bolivia!!!

  • Sanja

    Great tutorial! Thank you so much!

  • Sam

    thank you! this was so good, and very easy!
    very helpful… thank you very much!

  • JuJu

    Great Tutorial. I have Use it on original Size and it works very good. :3 now i have something for my wall <3 Thanks

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  • Zanetine

    It was amazing tutorial …..Thnx

  • http://www.facebook.com/Sathi.Bhai.007 Arsal Hussain

    Like It………!! GOood Enough For Me…