Using the Dodge Tool

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The burn, and sponge tools are hidden under the dodge tool in the toolbox. If one of these was used last, it will be on top, and the dodge tool will be hidden. To find it, click on the tool which is showing, and choose the one you want from the pop-up menu.

The dodge tool will lighten the pixels dragged over according to the percentage chosen in the tool’s options bar [see below]. You can choose to lighten highlights, midtones, or shadows. Each must be worked on separately; the tool does not work on all three at once.

To use the dodge tool, select it in the toolbox, choose your settings in the options bar, pick a brush from the pop-up palette, and drag in the image to lighten the chosen tones. This tool has an effect on click, but does not do any additional work until it’s moved (unless you click the airbrush button). However, repeated stroking over the same area does have a cumulative effect.

If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity of the strokes you have just applied.

A shortcut for changing brush sizes while using this tool is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, and the right bracket ] to choose a larger brush. Shift-right-clicking on your document while using this tool will open its Range menu next to your cursor.

Note that these tools cannot be used on 1 bit Bitmap mode, or Indexed color mode images.

The keyboard shortcut for the dodge tool is the letter O. You can cycle through the dodge, burn, and sponge tools by holding down the Shift key while pressing the shortcut letter.

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Loading Brushes in Adobe Photoshop CS

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To load a Photoshop brush in Adobe Photoshop CS, first select a brush tool, from the main tools panel. The tools you can use are the paintbrush, history brush, rubber stamp, eraser, smudge/blur, and dodge/burn tools.

In the next window again click on the small arrow on the right, this will open another menu panel, from there we can now load the new brushes. From the new menu panel select 'Load Brushes' then select the photoshop brushes you want to load. All you need to do is locate the .abr file on your machine.

And thats it, lots of things to click on but once you get used to it you can do it pretty fast.

Once the new photoshop brushes are loaded you can select them by using the menu panel as described above.

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Photoshop Spot Healing Tool

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The spot healing brush made its debut in Photoshop Elements 3, but now an enhanced version of it is available in Photoshop CS2. The spot healing tool is different from the existing patch and healing tools in that it does not require you to make a selection or define a source point before using it. As you can see in the screen shot above, Photoshop CS2's spot healing tool has more options than the version in Photoshop Elements 3. You can select a blending mode for the healing, and choose between proximity match or create texture. You can also sample all layers which allows you to use the spot healing tool on a new layer for non-destructive editing.

With the spot healing tool, you simply click on or drag across the flaw you want to remove and it disappears. The retouched area is blended into the surroundings seamlessly — most of the time anyway. It takes a little practice getting a feel for how brush size and healing work together, but most of the time it does an impressive job.

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Photoshop Brushes Techniques

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Brushes are the core component of many tools in the toolbox, and confident brush handling is essential for the effective application of these. You need to master brushes because this gives you many ways in which you can use and edit brushes will equip you with a whole new set of skills, and give you access to a wide range of powerful and creative time-saving techniques.

The Brush Preset picker will help you to find the right brush fast so make the most of it

With some Photoshop tools, such as the Clone Stamp, the Brush Preset picker is used simply to edit the tool’s brush size, softness and opacity.

Because the Clone Stamp’s function is to subtly replace one area of pixels with another, you don’t need its brush tip to be shaped like a rubber duck, for example!

However you can use the Brush Preset picker to arm yourself with a variety of creatively-shaped brushes, should your project require them. Working smarter with the Brush Preset picker means maximising its potential. If you’re not already familiar with this interface.

The Brush Preset Picker

Click on the Brustic to open the Brush Preset picker, and scroll down to see the default set of brushes.

Towards the foot of the list of default brushes you’ll find a variety of unusually-shaped brush tips, including brushes shaped like stars and blobs.

Click on the picker’s menu icon to access other, specialised sets of brushes. You can use the picker’s menu to display a thumbnail of the brush stroke, or set it to show the brush tip and name.

The numerical value indicates the brush’s initial diameter in pixels. You can customise this to suit your requirements. When you select a new set of brushes, you can either replace the existing default set or append the new set to it so you can use both.

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Creating Custom Brushes in Photoshop

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Making custom brushes is one of the easiest things in the world. Seriously! I don't know why I've read some tutorials that make it out to be this multi-step, intimidating process. Creating your own brushes helps to customize both your artwork and the Photoshop work environment

The Hard Part
"But ... you said this would be easy!!" Technically, yes, but I've found that some people actually reach a little stumbling block when trying to think of what would make a good brush. Well, the short answer is ANYTHING! I've made brushes out of fuzzy leopard slippers, bananas, old trash cans, fabric swatches, dirt ... hundreds of things. It helps to have a scanner and/or a digital camera ... that really opens up your possibilities. Just a quick walk around your house might yield dozens of fun textures you can make brushes out of. But, even if you don't have either of those, you can often snurch some good textures off the internet. Try a google search for marble tile and see what comes up. Sometimes you'll get a nice big image to work with. I'm not condoning stealing someone's art photos to rip a brush off with, but if it's just a sample photo of tile, or fabric, or screen, or whatever, I think it's perfectly fine ... you'll be drastically changing the image in the next steps anyway.

The Next Steps
Okay, so you've got some good textures then? Right, let's make a custom brush out of 'em! Open up your image in Photoshop. The first thing you'll want to do is desaturate the image (Shift+Ctrl+U in PS7). Then cut and paste what you've got into a new layer. Now delete the background layer. Once you're down to just the single layer, mess with the brightness/contrast until you get the desired effect (this will require you to think a little bit about how you might use the brush in the future - will you be wanting to use it as a 'grunge' effect ... something more technical ... etc. etc.)

The Super Easy Part
Now that you've got the image looking like you want, you'll need to create it as a Photoshop brush. Go to 'Edit' then choose 'Define Brush'. Give your new brush a name and that's it!! Easy, huh?

Saving All Your Hard Work
There are few things worse than having hundreds of cool brushes gone in an instant. It's happened to me on one occasion where my hard drive fried out and I didn't save all my customized Photoshop stuff. So I'm going to help you avoid any tragedies and tell you how to save your brushes. Once you've got an amount of brushes made (I personally like to create 'sets' of brushes that all kind of work together, or just happened to fit my mood that day!), go to 'Edit' then choose 'Preset Manager'. A window with all your current brushes will pop up. You can click on each little square individually. What you're going to want to do is shift+right click on the series of brushes you want to save. Once you've done that, click on 'Save Set', give the set a name and save it to your computer (of course these brush files are what you're going to want to back up!). There, you're done!

How To Get Other Custom Brushes Into Your Pallet
If you've found a cool brush set on the web and you'd like to use them, after you download the file (usually a zip file), you'll want to extract them to your Photoshop/Brushes directory. To load a brush set in Photoshop, open the Brushes Palette ('Windows', 'Palettes', 'Show Brushes'). Select Load Brushes from the menu on the Brush Palette and choose your file. That's it!
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Photoshop A Basic Tutorial

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The basics of Photoshop are relatively easy to pick up, but can seem a bit of a mystery when you first come to the program, thanks to its somewhat unintuitive interface and lack of simple tutorials.

Photoshop is basically made up of four areas: the menu bar, at the top, the toolbar just below it, the toolbox on the left and the palettes on the right. The menu bar and toolbox always stay the same, as they contain the different modes and options that you can choose, but the toolbar changes depending on context. The palettes are there to show the current status of your image, including the history of all the actions you have used and a thumbnail overview of how the ‘big picture’ currently looks.

To demonstrate the way the interface changes as you use it, try selecting the type tool from the toolbox (the one that looks like a capital T). You will see straight away that the toolbar changes entirely to allow you to set font name, font size and so on. In the history palette, your use of the type tool will be added to your history, and a new layer will be created for your text and shown in the layers palette.

Whatever you’re trying to do in Photoshop, then, the chances are that your starting point will be either the toolbox or the menus. While the toolbox contains everyday tools such as selecting, filling and making shapes, the menus have more complicated functions like blurring, sharpening, and all the other effects Photoshop can achieve (mostly to be found under the Filter menu). When you have selected a tool from the toolbox, you can alter its settings using the toolbar – options from the menu will generally open a dialog box. Finally, when you want to go back and alter something that you already put on the image, you can use the palettes, although they have some other uses too, notably changing colors.

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How to Remove Background from an Image

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If you have ever done any image editing in Photoshop, you know that one of the hardest things to do is to take an image out of its current background. I have a very easy way to do this, which is also very accurate in getting just the image that you would like to use. Here are the steps to use to remove the background from an image in Photoshop.

The first thing that you need to do is to open the image whose background you would like to remove. Then select the Magic Wand Tool from the Tools box.

The Magic Wand Tool is a great tool to get the image you are trying to select roughed out. This tool will select a section of an image based on the color of the image. Do not worry about getting everything exactly right using this tool, but you want get a rough selection of the image you are trying to extract from the background.

You want to click on the image to make the first selection, and then hold down the shift key while clicking to continue adding selections, until you have the entire image that you would like to remove selected. Right now you will probably notice that not the entire image has been selected, or that the selection is not very clean looking. To fix this, Photoshop has a very handy built-in tool to help clean up your selection.

Right below the color selection area in the Tools box is two small icons that look like cameras. The one on the right is Edit in Quick Mask Mode, click on this one and everything you have not selected will turn red.

Then you can use the eraser tool to add to your selection, and the paint brush tool to remove from your selection. After using these tools to clean up your selection, click on the Edit in Standard Mode button to see your finished selection.

Then you can click on Edit, Copy and then click on File, New to open a new image. Photoshop will look at the image that you have copied on the clipboard, and size the new image to the same size as the image copied.

Then paste your copied image to the new image, and you will have your extracted image with a transparent background.

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The Mona Lisa in MS Paint

Ok, this has absolutely nothing to do with Photoshop, but I think you'll be amazed!



You could make this even better with my Photoshop Video Tutorials!

Color Management, the Digital Darkroom

In order to understand color management, it is important to get your hands around some of the workflow. It is also important to understand a little bit about the ICC itself. The ICC or "International Color Consortium" was created in 1993 by a number major corporations with the goal of assisting end users in creating consistent color throughout the entire reproduction process. ICC profiles are a means by which one device can translate the same color information to another. This process is applied in graphics programs like Adobe Photoshop, and created in color management systems like X-rite’s Pulse or ColorVision’s Spyder software.

How is a profile created?

In order to have a fully color controlled environment you must have all devices displaying or printing color, profiled. How is this accomplished? Color management software (CMS) takes readings from your specific devices and compares their color with reference files of what color “should be” as defined by the ICC. For example, to profile a scanner you would scan in what is called an IT8 target. This scan is then compared with a reference file by the CMS. The differences between what the reference file says the color should be, and what the color your device actually output is meat of the profile. Basically, a profile says what’s not perfect about your particular device. If your scanner always seems to scan things in a little green, or your printer always seems to print things with a magenta cast-these are the things that are taken into account when color profiling your devices. To complicate matters a little further, this process also takes into account the differences in color between various paper and ink combinations.

Understanding Your Environment.

Color Model: When you hear the term color model we are referring to the method from which we define or classify the color we are to work with. Examples of such are RGB, LAB, CMYK, etc. Color Space: A color space is simply a variation of your color model. For instance, within your RGB framework some common variations are, sRGB, Adobe RGB, and so on. Some of these spaces are better for display e.g. sRGB and Wide Gamut RGB while other color spaces are more suited to printing e.g. ColorMatch RGB and Adobe RGB.

Now, it is important to note that every device in our workflow utilizes it's own unique color space. Meaning, while your monitor, scanner, and printer will base their color spaces basically on what we can see their actual gamut (range of colors) will differ. This is where we lose our consistency across devices. This is the problem we must attend to.

Color Management Using Adobe Photoshop: Step-by-Step

Okay, so now we’re ready for the whole process-it’s a big one, so keep with me. In this section I will describe how color management works with entry-level CMS’s like Monaco EZ Color or ColorVision’s Spyder2-programs like these >b>utilize actual hardware colorimeters for monitor calibration and a reflective target for scanner calibration. Scanning the printed target with your home scanner creates the printer profile. Entry-level programs like these generally retail between $150 and $500.

Step One: The Monitor

This step is quite easy and is generally conducted entirely in the CMS program of your choice. The CMS will guide you through the process of adjusting you monitor brightness and contrast to its proper settings and then, with the hardware colorimeter, take readings of the colors your monitor can produce. Your CMS should also set this profile as your default profile for your operating system. Take note if your CMS doesn’t already explain it, you should remove Adobe Gamma Loader.exe from your Startup folder after creating a new monitor profile. AGL is a very minimal monitor correction tool and will conflict with your newly created profile.

Step Two: The Scanner

For the scanner profile you will be using an IT8 target. This is a printed color reference of approx. 250 color patches. These targets are manufactured under strict controls and are measured by ICC approved methods to produce accurate reference files. Kodak, Coloraid, and Fuji are the major manufacturers of IT8 targets and should be included with your CMS package but may be a required separate purchase. There are two forms of IT8 targets: reflective and transparent. Reflective targets create a generally consistent profile for scanning reflective images. Transparent IT8 targets are printed on to the specific film to be profiled and therefore cannot be used as globally as reflective targets.

Profiling of the scanner involves scanning the IT8 target under the same conditions that will be used to scan originals. This has to be taken to the nth degree, as every setting in your scanner software needs to be exactly the same for scanning the target as it is for every other original that you will scan. Turning all hue/saturation/brightness/contrast controls off in your scanner software generates the most effective profile. Any auto correction adjustments need to be turned off so the same conditions the profile gets generated under will apply to each consecutive scan.

At this point you will scan in the IT8 target, most likely at 200 dpi, and save the file. Some CMS’s will have you scan the IT8 target out of their own interface, but I would recommend scanning the target with the same application that you will be using in the future-if possible. When scanning into an application like Photoshop, remember to save the image without any profile attached (in Photoshop when saving you will see a checkbox under Save Options>Color that is labeled ICC Profile-make sure this is not checked). Now load this image into your CMS, it will take this image and calculate the differences between what your scanner sees compared to what the colors of the IT8 “really” are.

Step Three: The Printer

Now, the last piece to the puzzle, printer targets. Like transparent IT8 targets, printer targets are more complex. Similar to film, different papers or media can produce incredibly different color results. This has to be taken into account in the profiling stage. When creating a printer profile, you are essentially creating a description of the differences between what is ideal color and what is the result of the specific paper/ink/quality setting you choose. A profile created for a professional glossy photo paper will generally not produce good results if used to print on a matte heavy weight paper. The same holds true for differences in ink or quality/speed settings.

In your CMS you should be given the option to save your printer target for printing within your chosen graphic app. If asked choose not to apply a profile when opening. In Photoshop choose File>Print with Preview. Change the Output dropdown to Color Management. Under Source Space choose Document. Under Print Space choose Profile: Same as Source. You are now set up in Photoshop to print your profile target. You aren’t done yet! Now go into your printer driver software and set any color options to none, or zero, or whatever shuts off any color changes by the driver. Now print your target.

This is where professional level CMS’s and entry level ones differ. At this point with the entry level you will scan in the printed target and the CMS will actually use the before generated scanner profile to correct the scan, so it can the correct your printed target. A professional level CMS will have a separate hardware device designed specifically for reading printed media targets.

Step Four: Utilizing the Profiles

Okay, now that we’ve created all of the profiles, time to implement them. You monitor profile should be getting applied upon startup by your operating system, so let’s move on to your scanner. Scan in an image-once again using the exact same settings that were used to create the profile (other than resolution). In Photoshop choose Image Menu>Assign Profile. Then choose Profile: Your Scanner Profile. Having done all of the previous steps in Photoshop correctly, you should now be amazed at how your image colors changes to appear incredibly like the original that you’ve just scanned in.

From here go to Image Menu>Convert to Profile and choose working RGB from the profile selections. This will convert your document to the native RGB working space of Photoshop. When printing you will apply the printer profile by once again choosing File>Print with Preview, select Document as your Source Space (which this time should be your Working RGB space) and in your Print Space choose Profile: Your Printer Profile. Remember once again to disable any color options in your printer driver. Finally, Print!

Other Notes on Profiling

I would recommend using Relative Colorimetric as your Rendering Intent when doing the Convert to Profile step and when printing with Print with Preview out of Photoshop. Rendering intents control how the profile is applied to either the scanner or printed image. Relative Colorimetric has proven to be the best in my testing. Read the documentation that came with your CMS in order to learn more about the other available rendering intents.

Profiles are only as accurate as the CMS that generates them and the size of the targets that are used to generate them. Packages in the $150-$500 price range generally have around 75-250 patches, while $2000 and up gets you 729 patches or more. Also, the more expensive packages rely on physical hardware devices to generate printer profiles, while the less expensive packages use your scanner as the print colorimeter. In addition, the more expensive packages have numerous options for the edition of the profiles you create.

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How to Create a Panoramic Photos With CS Photomerge

These days you don't need a special camera to create awesome panoramic photographs. With Photoshop CS using Photomerge makes the process quick and easy. Photomerge in Photoshop CS was created especially for panoramic photography. The process itself is really quite easy but the results of the merge will be depend on the layout and image source quality. The Photomerge feature permits the selection of images intended for automatic panoramic Photomerge and it also allows for manual arrangements.

Since your final photo depends on the quality of the source images it is necessary to make note of some tips when shooting scenic photographs. These tips include:

• Use manual exposure when shooting pictures. Merging the pictures later on will be difficult if different exposures per shot are used.
• Try to keep the camera as steady as possible when shooting. If you can, use a tripod to steady the camera.
• Keep a long distance between the camera and the subject, especially when working with landscapes. Chances of parallax are greater when objects are too close to the camera.

Here are simple step-by-step instructions on how to come up with great panoramic images using Photoshop CS Photomerge:

• Open several images of a single scenery in Photoshop CS.
• Go to the File option, the select Automate, and then go to Photomerge. This will open the Photoshop dialog box.
• Check that the images you want to merge are in the dialog box.
• Next check the Attempt to Automatically Arrange Source Images box and then select Ok.
• The program will then automatically select the images one by one, and attempt to merge them into one panoramic photo. If your photos don't quite match you may get an error because the program cannot merge the images automatically. If this happens don't panic. It is still possible to arrange the images manually.
• If an errors does occurs, integrate the image or images that were not merged by pulling that image or the images from the top window into the panorama and arranging to the desired position. Photoshop CS will then integrate the image into the panorama automatically.

Tips for great Panoramic Photos:

Sometimes, clear lines that separate the images in the panorama may appear. It is possible to blend the lines so that they disappear. Select the Advance Blending option located at the right of the Photomerge window, then select Preview. Inconsistencies in color will be calculated by the program. At this point, the images will blend together.

Photoshop will combine all the individual images for your panoramic into a single layer. If you select the Keep as Layers option it is easier to edit each image individually. This is a great help if one of the images is brighter or darker then the other images. You can select that image in layers and adjust the brightness for just that image. It is a good idea to save the layers as a .psd file so that you can always come back and correct any mistakes or make any changes later. It's a real pain to have to redo everything from scratch just if you made a mistake or want to change something later.

You can also distort the pictures so that the scene will look like it is in perspective. Choose the Perspective option on the bottom of Settings. You can also do this by choosing Set Vanishing Point in the Photomerge window, then click to an area in the panorama.

Using the Perspective mode can often produce panoramic photos in a more accurate manner then the Normal mode. The Normal setting usually does not match the images seamlessly where Perspective does.

You can also use Cylindrical mapping which is where images are projected into a cylinder.

Beautiful panoramic photos are easy to create with Photomerge in Photoshop CS. Photomerge will make the task a breeze for just about anyone to produce inspiring and professional-looking images.

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Ink and Color a comic strip with a wacom

In this video I demonstrate how i use the Wacom tablet with adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to complete one of my Chad the Fat Kid comic strips. I also discuss how the Wacom helps me over come my disability which has crippled my hands. I tried to make this as educational as possible with real tips and skills. I also tried to make it entertaining. enjoy!







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Creating Bar Codes

step 1 We create the new image and we use filter Filter/Noise/Add Noise with parameters: amount = 400; gaussian; monochromatic.

step 2 Now apply filter Filter/Blur/Motion Blur with parameters: angle = 90, distance = 999 pixels.

step 3 Now on figure we establish contrast and clearness of lines CTRL+M (I advise to experiment).

step 4 Well now cutting out also we add some numbers, and our bar code is ready.

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Achieving Worn Look

I’m sure many of you have seen the new styles of American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale, Urban Outfitters, among many others. Their clothing line portrays a rustic, rough look. Many times their logos and emblems carry those same characteristics. For those photoshop lovers out there, here’s a quick and simple homemade trick to achieve the worn look and feel to your logo. For the sake of time I’m going to use HCR’s logo.

The first thing you will want to do is open your logo in photoshop obviously. Make sure your layers palette is visible by choosing ‘window > layers’ from the file menu.

Now go and find yourself a nice picture of a brushy landscape — either of trees, wheat fields, flowers, woods etc. Those types of pictures will give us the textures we are looking for. Try to pick out a picture that is similar in layout ie. landscape or portrait. Landscape it what I will use in this tutorial.

Drag the picture you chose into the logo document. You will want this on a separate layer above your logo. Next, choose from the file menu ‘image > adjustments > threshold’. Drag the slider to 50%. Your end result should look like this.

Next take your magic wand tool and make sure the tolerance is set to 10. Select the black areas in the tree layer by clicking once. Copy the selection by choosing ‘edit > copy’, then do ‘edit > paste’. This will paste a copy of the selected area above your tree layer. Turn off the tree layer by clicking the eye on the layer.

Now go to the file menu and choose ’selection > load selection’. A window will pop-up, then click OK. Those black areas should have a marquee around them. Now choose ‘edit > fill’ — Make sure White is chosen in the Contents dropdown box, then click OK. Then from the file menu choose ’select > deselect’. You should have something similar to this:

Now you we want to apply a small blur effect. Go to the file menu and choose ‘filter > blur > gaussian blur’. Enter in 0.4 and click OK. Now, from your layers palette you will see a dropdown box that most likely says ‘normal’ — click that and choose ‘overlay’. Next, choose the burn tool in the tool palette (it’s right below the gradient tool). My brush size was around 27 and the exposure was set for midtones @ 50%. Take the brush and randomly burn the edges of the logo.

Next, select the paintbrush from your tools palette. Make sure your foreground color is set to white. I used a size 13 brush in this exercise. Draw random lines within the logo as shown below.

Now go to your file menu and choose ‘filter > blur > gaussian blur’. Enter in 5.0 and click OK. Next choose ‘filter > sharpen > sharpen more’. Repeat ’sharpen more’ 3-4 more times until the brush strokes appear grainy.

One final step: Go to your layers palette, decrease the opacity on your brush strokes layer to 45-50%. That should give the logo some texture. You are finally finished — a homemade way to create your own worn graphics. Happy photoshopping!

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Using Radial Blur

Center the art, not the blur...

The one thing neglected in many of those tutorials is the fact that many Photoshop effects default to the center of the image window. There's nothing you can do about it. So, naturally they use a centered subject photo so their (easy) tutorial works perfectly every time.
So, what we've got to do is bring the art to the effect, rather than bringing the effect to the art.

The first thing you've got to do is increase the Canvas size so you can move your photo around... follow along:

First, make a copy of the art or photo. I usually just select all (cmd/A) and then "float" a copy (cmd/J). This puts a copy of the art on a new layer.

I know I'll need the original later.

Use the Crop Tool and drag the handles well beyond the edges of your image. When you commit that crop (just double-click inside the cropped area) your canvas will immediately expand to accommodate.

Since the Radial Blur uses the edges of the image to find center, we'll place our subject at the center of the newly sized canvas.

My method of finding center is the old-time photo cropping method of simply drawing an "X" through the art. Where the two lines cross will be the center. So on a new layer I grab the line tool and simply draw from corners to corners.

Now, using the Move tool (Tap "V") I move the part of my subject I want centered to where the lines cross. The young lady's face is what I want to concentrate on.

Now set the Radial BlurFilters > Blur > Radial Blurand select "Zoom" or what ever effect you like.

With your blur finished, we'll return to that original we saved earlier and paint back in some sharp detail.

Note here that I've moved the original up under the blurred versionNow click on the "Layer Mask" icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette, and then click on the mask thumbnail. (Note that the thumbnail gets a double border, indicating it's the active object.)

Using a very soft-edged brush, set to about 80% opacity, I'll begin with the face and paint black into the mask. As I paint, I can see the detail coming back into my photo.

Paint just the parts you want revealed. Here, I painted all the face and torso, then did some sketchy paint out into part of the legs and arms.

SIDEBAR: Folks, you don't have to use the mask -- you could simply use the eraser tool and remove pixels to reveal the sharp image below. I use a mask because it's "non destructive" and if I goof up, I can always paint back in with white, or start again.

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How to Place a Picture Inside of Text

FIRST: select the image you plan to use. Here, we've moved it to a new layer with white as our background in order to demonstrate the effect later. You do not necessarily need to do this.

Set the Type: Now, set the word using the type input method of your current version of Photoshop or Elements. Here we used a heavy, condensed type style to provide as much area for the image as possible. In earlier versions, this type will be rastarized as a picture object. In later versions it will be live type, and you can leave it like that if you wish.

Select the type to make a "cookie cutter": In later versions, you can Command / Click (Ctrl/Click) the layer to SELECT the type. This displays the "racing ants" around each letter indicating that it is selected.

Float the Image into the Selection:
a. Click the Photo layer to select it - while the selection is active
b. Float or "pick up" the image by using the Float command/J (Ctrl/J)
c. The selection will fill with a COPY of the art within the selection and generate a new layer (below)(Note: older versions will need to use Edit > Copy, then create a new layer, and Edit > Paste)

Done: Turn OFF the original photo layer, and you'll see your type is filled with the image.

In this example below, I've also generated a layer with the type set to a Gaussian Blur so the edges of the letters which would be white will show. This is not an essential step, but placed here merely to show off the type. Note, this could have been done with the original type layer, Rastarized, but we left it in place for this demonstration.

There are lots of other ways to do this technique. In Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3, using the Type Mask tool would do the same in a single step. There are also other ways to generate layer masks which accomplish the same effect, but this method works in virtually ALL image editing programs on ALL platforms which support layered art.

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