How to use Photoshop to place an image in text

In this tutorial we will use Photoshop to place an image in text. It requires a Clipping Mask, which is easy to make if you know how. Photoshop CS4 was used for these screenshots, but you should be able to follow other versions.

How to use Photoshop to place an image in text

To get started, right-click on the image to save the training file to your computer, then open the image in Photoshop.

Practice file: STgolf-practice file.png

Give the layer a name

In the Layers panel, we double click on the name of the layer to select it and enter the name “image”.

Add text

In the layers panel we click on the eye icon to make the image invisible. Next, we select the Text tool from the Tools panel, click once on the transparent background and type the word “GOLF” in capital letters.

For now, it doesn’t matter which font we use or the size, because we’ll be changing those things in the next few steps. And it doesn’t matter what color the font is when creating the clipping mask.

Change font

The font needs to be bold, so we go to Window > Character, and with the Type tool selected and the text selected, I change the font in the Character panel to Arial Black. You can choose this font or a similar font.

I type “100 pt” in the font size text box. Don’t worry if your text extends beyond the background, as the next step will fix that.

Set up tracking

Tracking adjusts the distance between letters in selected text or a block of text. In the drawing panel, we enter -150 in the tracking set text box. However, you can enter different numbers until the letter spacing is the way you want.

If you just want to adjust the spacing between two letters, you can use kerning. To adjust kerning, place an insertion point between two letters and set a value in the kerning preset text box to the left of the tracking preset text box.

free transformation

With the text layer selected in the layers panel, we’ll go to Edit > Free Transform. The keyboard shortcut for this is Ctrl + T on PC and Command + T on Mac. The bounding box will surround the text.

Scaling text

When we place the pointer over the bounding box handle, it turns into a double-sided arrow that we can drag to scale the text. We’ll drag the handle in the bottom right corner down and out until the text almost fills the transparent background.

You can optionally limit the zoom by holding down the Shift key while dragging. And you can click and drag the marquee to move it wherever you want. We move the bounding box to center the text in the background.

Move Image Layer

The layers must be in the correct order before we can create a Clipping Mask. In the Layers panel, we click the square next to the image layer to display the eye icon and drag the image layer to place it directly above the text layer. The text disappears behind the image.

clipping mask

With the image layer selected, we’ll go to Layer > Make Clipping Mask. This will place the image in the text.

Move image

With the image layer selected in the Layers panel, we select the Move tool in the Tools panel. We click on the image and move it around until we like how it fits into the text.

You can now select File > Save and name it, or continue adding the final touches.

Circle text

We want to sketch text. We open the Layer Style window by choosing Layer > Layer Style > Stroke.

Note that there are other ways to open the layer style window. You can double-click the text layer or, with the text layer selected, click the layer style icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Stroke.

Adjust your settings

In the Layer Style window we check the “Stroke” and set the size to 3, select “Outside” for the Position and “Normal” for the Blending Mode, then move the Opacity slider all the way to the right to make it 100%. Then I click on the color box. A window appears in which I can choose a line color.

Choose a stroke color

We click on the color slider or move the triangle of the color slider up or down until we like what we see in the Color field. We move the circle handle to the Color box and click to select a stroke color. We click on OK and again on OK.

Create a new layer

We would leave the background transparent if the text was needed for different uses — such as a brochure, a magazine ad, and a web page — because they could all have a different background that didn’t match my background color. For this tutorial, however, we’ll color the background so you can better see the selected text.

In the Layers panel, we click on the Create New Layer icon. We click and drag the new layer below the other layers, double click on the name of the layer to select it and then type the name “background”.

Choose a background color

With the background layer selected, we’ll click the foreground color picker in the Tools panel, as Photoshop uses the foreground color to paint, fill, and fill selections.

In the Color Picker, we click the color slider or move the triangle of the color slider up or down until we like what we see in the Color field. We move the circle marker to the Color field and click to select a color and then click OK.

Another way to specify a color with the color picker is to enter an HSB, RGB, Lab, or CMYK number, or enter a hexadecimal value.

Background colour

With the background layer still selected and the Paint Bucket tool selected in the Tools panel, we click on the transparent background to fill it with color.

Save finished image

Here is the end result; the image in the selected text on the background color. Choose File > Save and you’re done!