Adobe Photoshop Tips
copyright 2007 by Tracy Marks
Photoshop Classes, Tutoring, Consulting in Boston, MA.

Turn Your Photo Into Type
Use Type Mask to Make Image Type
In Adobe Photoshop
copyright 2007 by Tracy Marks

(prepared for Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Windows
but valid for most other recent versions of Photoshop)

continued from page two

4.To further dramatize the effect, you may wish to bevel and emboss the type. But currently, your background is selected. Choose select, inverse to reverse your selection and reselect the type.

5. Click the F button (special effects or layer styles) at the bottom of your layer palette and choose bevel and emboss. The large bevel and emboss dialog box will open. Move it to the side so you can see most of your picture.

6. In the bevel and emboss dialog box, choose outer bevel (on top).

7. Play with the depth and size slider, as well as the angle of the bevel and emboss, to choose the positioning that you prefer. You may of course experiment with other options as well. In most cases however, you will not want to alter your image so that the original picture can not be determined.

8. Click ok to close the dialog box. Voila! You have now turned your photo into a type effect. Note however that you really haven't created type out of your photo. In the layers palette, turn off the eye on your background layer, and you will notice that what you have really created on layer one is a mask. Indeed you could even delete your background layer and copy in another image to use as background, and you would still have the mask effect. Try it!

End of article. Return to page one

Note: Botticelli images have been adapted from images at the highly recommended CGFA Art Gallery and are used in accordance with their copyright policy. Please respect their copyright.