The Sprague Lab

MAN. I can’t believe we’re already here at 7 Photoshop Fridays. Feels like a day to celebrate, doesn’t it? Yes. Let’s celebrate your awesomeness at photoshop! Yeah YOU! :)

I hope you are enjoying the ideas here, and it’s helping you make cool stuff. I love to look at what you make, so link me up, okay? :) Leave a comment, pass the word along, whatev. Thanks.

Today’s PS Friday is, I think, really cool. So here we go.

Masking Out Text in Photoshop
or
Making it look like text is running behind objects in your photo.

The non-destructive way. ;)

(phew! How’s that for a title?)

Basically it means this:

Looks like my text is tucked back in behind that leaf. Pretty cool effect. I used this effect on one of my Hall of Fame entry layouts, and it turned out great. All the people I showed it to were like, “Whoa! How’d you do that?” And that, my friend, is our goal in Photoshop. ;)

Okay. Today’s instructions split off between Elements/All older versions of PS up to 7 on the one hand, and 7/CS/CS2 on the other. So go down the path for the version you have and we’ll be great. :)

Here goes:

1. Open the photo you’d like to add the text to. Please note that hair and fur make this a little more difficult, so I recommend starting on something that has fairly solid edges. Up to you, though, if you’re a glutton for punishment. :)
2. Add your text. Because part of the text is going to be invisible, people looking are going to have to decipher what your text says based on the visible parts. Because of this, I recommend a big fat font. I used Impact.

For Elements and PS 5.5 and 6:
a. Add a Brightness adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast)
b. In the layers palette, drag the adjustment layer below the text layer.
c. Click on the text layer in the layers palette and hit Ctrl-G.
Your layers palette should look like this (minus the black in the mask rectangle. we’ll be adding that):


For Photoshop 7, CS and CS2:
a. Click on the text layer.
b. Click on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette.
Your layers palette should look like this (minus the black in the mask rectangle. we’ll be adding that):



3. Select your layer mask thumbnail (the white rectangle) in the layers palette.
4. Choose a small round Brush tool, with the color black.
5. Zoom on in to your photo so you get some nice detail. This is the painstaking part. (tip: you might also want to reduce the opacity of your text layer, so you can see what’s going on beneath it)
   
6. Paint over the text that you would like to mask out. You’ll watch the text disappear. This is because in a layer mask, the color black works just like an eraser.
   

Remember that when you have the brush tool selected, the [ and ] keys will increase and decrease the size of your brush tip. That way you can have a small brush for accuracy and a larger brush for big swaths.

Really cool secret hints:
-Think you can use other cool brushes than a round one? You bet you can. And tons of cool effects can be produced by using brushes and layer masks. It’s mind-blowing, really.
-Remember how black “erases” from a layer mask? White does exactly the opposite. It adds bits of the masked-out object back into view. So if you mess up and cut out too much text, just switch to a white brush and paint it back in. So cool.

To finish off this photo, I changed my text layer (which was black) to Soft Light blending mode, and added in a frame and a couple of brushes on another layer and set them to Soft Light as well.

So you might be asking what the benefit of this method is to simply rasterizing (simplifying) your text layer and erasing bits? Easy. With a layer mask, the entire text layer is still there, but hidden. So if you mess up, or decide to edit that layer, you don’t have to throw anything away, just modify your mask and you’re good to go.

I’ll post a couple more examples later today, but just wanted to get this up there for you. Enjoy! :)