Recently, I came upon a technique that combines the facial features and the words of individuals. This process creates powerful images; the result could be the song lyrics that are distorted create the recognizable features of a musician or a prominent leader whose speech gave inspiration and hope to others. For this post, I will be describing how to create a typographic portrait in Photoshop.
Before we start working in Photoshop, two objects are needed. The first is a photo of the person you wish to portray. In this example, I saved a jpg file; however, a photo in png format will work too. The larger the photograph, the better results. This 72ppi resolution file of Abraham Lincoln is quite large at 2400px X 2800px, which is approximately 31 inches x 39 inches. Also, in this tutorial, I will be working with a black and white photograph. If the chosen photograph is colored, adjust it through Photoshop.
You will also need to create a “word wall,” which is a set of continuous text. I used the Textedit app to copy Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but any word processing software will work. After copying the speech, I removed all of the paragraph returns and spacing. I then copied the text repeatedly and continuously in the document to create a wall of words.
In Photoshop, we are going to process the photo in three sections.
The first step will be to make adjustments to the photograph. If the picture consists of more than just the subject’s face, crop it slightly past the head’s ears, chin, and top. For this technique, we are going to capture just the facial features.
Because we want a high contrast between highlights and shadows of the face, we will next add an adjustment layer. For this photo, I decreased the brightness to -6 and increased the contrast to 37. You may not need to reduce the brightness, but make sure to increase the contrast.
The last phase of this step is to add a blur filter so that when the text wraps around the shadows, it will not be a dramatic distortion to the text. We still want to read the text. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur. Adjust the radius levels so that the lights and darks slightly blend into each other.
Save your work as a .psd file. Since you will not need the Gaussian blur effect in the following steps, undo this effect by pressing CMD Z.
In the second section, we will be working with the word wall to create a displacement map. Copy the word wall. In Photoshop and using the Text tool, draw a text box over the photo layer. Paste the word wall into the text layer. Keep pasting in the words until they fill the text box.
In the character window, choose a font, style, character size and leading size, and the “all caps” option. Large character sizes will show greater legibility of the text, and small sizes with allow more legibility of the facial features. For this example, I chose a happy medium of 16pt. The font I chose is Avenir Next, bold style because its character set width is approximately equal to its height. As a general rule, the leading should be similar to the character size and since the height of the characters should also be the same, choose the “all caps” option.
In the paragraph window, check the “no hyphenation” box and “all justify” option.
The displacement map we will now create will be in the form of a smart object. To get started, chose Filter>Distort>Displace. In the displayed option box, choose “Convert to smart object.” Select the .psd file saved in the previous section. When the Displace window appears, enter a vertical and horizontal scale of “5.” When the smart object is created, it will have a separate “displace” layer within it. If you are not getting the results hoped for, adjusting this layer will change the scales.
The third and final section aims to create a clipping mask and a background that will contrast the clipping mask. At this time, the cropped photo is the bottom layer. Click and drag it above the smart object layer. Next, holding the option key, click the space between the photo and smart object layers.
To create a contrasting background, add a new layer, and fill with black. Click and drag this layer to the bottom of the stack.
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