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How to wrap text around a photo in Photoshop tutorial


In this Photoshop tutorial, I’m going to show you how to wrap text around a photo using displacement maps and image warp. This method will make the text follow every contour and wrinkle and produce a very realistic result. You can wrap pretty much anything around any photo using this technique. I have another very popular tutorial I wrote where I’m wrapping  text on the surface of a rock. 

In this tutorial, I give you written instructions as well as a video, which I have been doing for most of our tutorials now.

Here is the video

 

Step 1

Matching Perspective of the Photograph

I began with a photograph that I got from Adobe stock

 

wrap text around image photoshop tutorial

Step 2

Create some type in Photoshop on a new layer

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.48.10 AM

Step 3

In order to warp the text, it has to be Rasterized as you can’t warp native text

Right click in the Layers panel and choose “Rasterize Type”

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.48.27 AM

Step 4

Press Cmd/Ctrl+T for free Transform
Right click and select Warp

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.48.46 AM

Step 5

Drag on the grid to match the perspective of the photograph

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.50.03 AM

 

Displacement Map, matching the wrinkles in the photo

Step 6

Hide the text layer and click on the image layer

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.50.38 AM

Step 7

Open the channels panel.

Choose the channel with the most contrast detail in the duct tape, in this case it’s the green channel. We want to create a brand new document from this channel. The document should be in multi-channel mode (eek!) Don’t worry, it’s easy, follow along…

 

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.50.54 AM

Step 8

Right click on the channel and choose “Duplicate Channel”

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.51.11 AM

Step 9

You will see a dialog box

Change the Destination to “new” and name it (remember the name)

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.51.52 AM

Step 10

A new document will now be created from this channel this will be in Multi channel mode.

Open up levels (Cmd/Ctrl+L)

Add contrast by moving the triangles in the levels. In this case I moved the blacks and mids. The goal is to get as much contrast as possible while still keeping details in black and whites.

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.53.45 AM

Step 11

Right now the detail will make the text unreadable, so we need to soften it

Choose Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose an amount that gets rid of fine detail while still keeping the wrinkles. This image was large, so 9.9 works. If your image is smaller, use a less amount, maybe 5.

 

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.54.14 AM

Step 12

This is our map for displacement. Choose a location and name that you can remember and and save this image as a psd (Its has to be a PSD or it wont work).  I named it map-photoshopCAFE.psd

Using the Displacement Map

Step 13

Go back to your original document.

Click on RGB in the channels to make sure all channels are back on.

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.54.37 AM

Step 14

In the Layers panel, turn on the text layer and make sure it’s the active layer.

We are now ready to displace it

 

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.54.48 AM

Step 15

Choose Filter>Distort>Displace

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.55.03 AM

Step 16

The Displace box comes up with a default of 10 and 10 for vertical and horizontal. (This works for most images)

For smaller images try 5, for larger try 15 (You might have to try a number and undo and try a different one if its too weak or too strong)

 

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.55.59 AM

Step 17

Once you click on, a box will appear asking you to locate the Displacement map image.

This is the one we created earlier. Choose it!

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.55.34 AM

Step 18

And, bam! You text should now wrap nicely! Almost done!

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.56.27 AM

Xtra Credit

For a bit more realism, you could lower the opacity a little bit and soften the edges with a tiny bit of blur. Also try different blending modes to blend it even better.

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 10.57.05 AM

Here is our final result! I used overlay blend more and duplicated the text layer so it would be darker.

wraptextotoaphoto

 

I hope you enjoyed this! Check out more tutorials here at PhotoshopCAFE, as new one is added every week!

Thanks for reading!

Colin

 


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