In this tutorial, we’re going to make a typographic poster (like Grammy’s Typographic Posters) from a simple portrait using Photoshop techniques.
Final Image Preview
The described effects look nice on portraits with good contrast and light background, but you can easy adjust the contrast and make the background lighter using possibilities of Photoshop. (to make this tutorial I have used Female Stock thanks to Katanaz-Stock).
Step 1.
In Adobe Photoshop, open our portrait
and adjust the contrast Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast
Step 2.
From the Select menu, choose Color Range.
From the Select drop-down menu in the Color Range dialog, choose Shadows and click OK.
Press Ctrl+J (MAC: Command+J ) to copy the selected shadows pixels in a new layer. Back to the Background layer in the Layers palette.
Step 3.
Use Color Range again, but now choose Midtones from the Select drop-down menu and click OK.
Press Ctrl+J (MAC: Command+J ) to copy the selected midtones pixels in a new layer.
Step 4.
Click on the shadow layer and apply Edit>Fill (Shift+Backspace (Mac: Shift+Delete)). Use Black color, with Preserve Transparency selected, and click OK.
Then, activate the midtones layer and use the Fill again with 50% Gray color. You should have a portrait made from black and gray color.
Step 5.
Click on the shadow layer and press Ctrl+E (MAC: Command+E) to Merge Down it with the midtones layer.
Step 6.
Create a new document File>New (Ctrl+N (MAC: Command+N)). Set the Foreground color to black by pressing D. Use the Type tool (T) to type different words in various fonts and sizes.
Right click to select Rasterize Type for each word
and from the Edit menu, choose Define Brush Preset. Give a name for each brush in the Brush Name dialog and click OK.
Step 7.
Click the Create a New Layer at the bottom of the Layers palette. Set the Foreground color to black by pressing D.
Choose Brush Tool (B) and select one of your created brushes from the Brush Picker in the Options Bar.
In the Brushes panel(F5), click on the Brush Tip Shape. Adjust the Spacing between each word, Diameter and Angle of the brush. Paint on the new layer and feel free to experiment with the Spacing, Diameter and Angle of the brush.
Repeat with your other custom brushes.
Step 8.
Create a new layer, Press Ctrl+Backspace (MAC: Command+Delete) to fill it with white color
and and drag it under the layer painted with brushes
Step 9.
Hide all the layers except the black&gray portrait layer, and then click on that layer to make it active.
Press Ctrl+A (MAC: Command+A) to Select All content of the layer and then press Ctrl+C (MAC: Command+C) to Copy.
Step 10.
Activate the layer painted with brushes, click on the Add Layer Mask at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a layer mask.
Hold Alt (MAC: Option) and click on the layer mask thumbnail.
Press Ctrl+V (MAC: Command+V) to paste the content of the black&gray portrait layer in the mask.
Press Ctrl+D (MAC: Command+D) to Deselect. Press Ctrl+I (MAC: Command+I) to Invert the mask.
Step 11.
Activate the layer painted with brushes (not the mask) by clicking on the layer thumbnail. The text will appear inside the white&gray areas
of the mask.
Create a new layer and add more text brushes outside the mask.
Step 12.
Add a Gradient Overlay style to the layer painted with brushes by clicking on the Add a Layer Style icon (fx) at
the bottom of the Layers palette and select Gradient Overlay.
Click on the Gradient, and select the Blue, Red, Yellow gradient in the Gradient Editor dialog box and click OK.
Step 13.
Repeat the same operation for layer with text brushes outside the mask but use Violet, Orange gradient in the Gradient Editor.
That’s it! Our Typographic Portrait like Grammy’s Posters is complete.
53 Responses
Cool work, thank you
Awesome work! thanks
very cool ! nicely written too ! will have to try this out !
What a great effect! Very unique
I luv this tutorial! AWESOME!!!
Super cool
I went through a first run of this tutorial, and decided to back up to do more type brushes. When I thought I was ready, I moved ahead and got stuck at a place that didn’t happen the first time. I cannot past the black/grey image selection into the Layer mask on the type layer. The portrait image gets pasted in a separate layer. I have tried in both Photoshop 7 and in CS. Any ideas?
Oh, and i was always careful to select the layer mask icon. Puzzling, since I did it once.
Really cool… Has me wanting to give it a shot.
Found answer on the Photoshopgroup list on Yahoo.
When selecting the layer mask, hold Alt key. Then paste in the loaded image.
I think you work came out awesome! However when I do it step by step by the step where I have to do the midtones and create a layer with them, they come out so faint that it looks like theres nothing there at all. Why do you think this may be? I tried it over and over and over again. Initially with 40 percent contrast the way you did it and then a bunch of other ways. None seemed to cause the midtones to show up…
Anyways hope to hear from you if you have time…
In any event thanks for the tut!
Kept at it and found out what was going wrong with the midtone and shadow steps. However, now I can’t seem to do the brush steps. Is it because I have CS and have to do rasterize layer instead of rasterize text?
Thanks
Wow…this is legendary…
Great tut man, thanks
echt gut…ich habe eine menge gelernt. danke
Wow, really cool~!
wil try and follow it soon~
very good!
Very good thanks.
@ carol
the same thing happens to me, i even tried ur fix and still nothing
Great tutorial. Well laid out and great directions. Thanks.
Really useful information. I read a similar article in ‘Photoshop Retouch’ but I like yours better.
Hello, would you mind if I translate your tutorial and place it on our website?
We’ll give the link to the original of your tutorial in our translation. Thanks!
I just can’t paste into the layer mask! Anyone figure it out already?
Please Help…
i am very like….!!!!!!!!
very fun:-) but a little creepy:-P
Bloody brilliant.. love it!
WoW
very good
awesome outcome
hey i tryed this tut but there is a problem in step 10 when i add a layer mask to layer 3 than when i try holding Alt and click on layer mask a new gray layer mask appears after that when i try to past black&gray portrait layer in the mask it dosent past it on mask it creats a new layer then when i invert the pic it dosent invert
iam using cs4 so just wanted to tell u if iam making a mistake plz tell me cuz this is a kool tut and i wanted 2 try it thanks
That’s a great workflow to achieve this result.
Nice one !
Brilliant
Quite bad
So , cool! very useful tutorial. Thanks ^^
Typograpy very hard. But your typography is awesome and colorful.
I luv it.
Thanks for learn us how to make this impressive effect.
This is freakin’ sweet!! I’m going to try this with a pic of my hottie wife!! Excellent stuff!!
thats rad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
this is moderatly hard to follow. you should put in more details on how liberally to distribute the words around step 7.
I love this tut:so nice.thanks
can somebody tell me how to paste the content of the black&gray portrait layer in the mask. whenever i paste it it creates a new layer and not in the mask. thanks.
hey folks. i’ve solved it already. i’ve already pasted the the content of the black&gray portrait layer in the mask (step 10). this is what i did:
when pasting to the mask, from layers palette, change it into channels palette and make all the layers visible. once it is visible, paste it in the channels palette. then return to layers palette and you may now follow the rest of the tutorial. hope this helps.
i like this cool tutorial
nice interesting thanks for sharing this tutorial
YOU ROOOOOOOOOOOOOCKKKKK!!! This is the BEST tutorial I’ve ever seen. Your instructions are so clear, it’s really easy to follow and the result is simply genius. I’ve already done my poster and I’m static with the result. Thank you so much for sharing!!
Wow, thanks for this really detailed tutorial! I did it on an image of me: http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/4528/typographygrammys.jpg
It’s a lot of work but I like the result.
tutorial as tight as a tiger. GG
great tuto!!! lots of thanks!
cool tutorial, even if you don’t copy it 100%
Here’s my final version of it: http://i46.tinypic.com/27×05mw.jpg
I’m using CS2 and I’m stuck on step 6. It will not let me define brush presets. Can someone help me? please?!?!
Omgosh, this looks great and thank you for going step by step,other websites expect you to already know all the other details!! I love it!
wonderful tut !!! amazing…
Awesome work!….thanks
Very Smart. I always wondered how they do this kinda stuff and neve thought of using a brush!
Thats amazing.. Thanks a bunch!! :]