Things you will learn from here:

• Cutting out the picture based on texts edges.
• Ctrl+Click on the layer’s thumbnail.

1. Open any picture file.

2. ‘Save As‘ the picture into Photoshop document with a different filename.

3. Double-click the ‘Background’ layer to unlock it. Name it as ‘pic’.

4. Write the text. Use a font with broad or bulky style like Bernard MT or Impact.

5. Make your text big, enough to fill the whole picture if possible. Ctrl+T to resize it. Press Enter key once you’re done with the transformation.

6. If you want to remove spaces between letters, show your Character Palette (Windows > Character) and select negative numbers in the Tracking or Metric combo box.

7. To see parts of the picture that are covered by the text, lessen the value in the Opacity of your text layer. Whatever is covered by the text right now will be the ‘fill’ of your text later on. You may want to adjust the text or the picture using the Move tool.

8. Press Ctrl key and click on the thumbnail of the Text layer. This will create a selection based on the edges of your text.

9. Now, you will apply the current selection to your ‘pic’ layer. To do this, click on the ‘pic’ layer.

10. Be sure that the Marquee or Lasso tool is selected. Then, right-click inside the selection. Click ‘Select Inverse’, then press the Delete button on your keyboard. Ctrl+D to remove the selection.

11. Remove the Text layer by selecting it and clicking the trash icon in the Layers Palette.

12. You’re done! You just ‘filled the text with picture’.

Now you can apply any ‘magic’ you know from Photoshop to this ‘picture-filled text’. See a sample file below.

In this file, I added the following:

• A gradient-filled rectangle that serves as the background.
• Used the Warp Transformation to curve the bottom of the picture.
• Bevel and Emboss
• Duplicate the ‘MenOfPraise’ picture, flip it vertically, and apply Gradient Overlay to make it like a reflection.