Type Masks

One of the most interesting and effective ways of making text and photos work together is to fill the characters of large display type with an image. In Photoshop, cropping an image inside editable text is easy. All you need to do is group the image layer to the type layer underneath it in the Layers palette. The great thing about type masks is that they allow you to edit the text, and thus change the crop area, at any time—without damaging any pixels!

Let’s take a step-by-step look at how this is done.
1. Open the image that you’d like to place inside some type. Select the Background layer by pressing F/Ctrl+A, and then press F/Ctrl+Shift+J to cut the image to a new layer above the Background. Enter a new name for the layer (NYC in this example).

2. To begin creating your text, press T to access the Horizontal Type tool. In the tool’s Options palette, select a bold face font with characters that are thick enough for an image placed within them to be recognizable, as well as a large point size and an alignment option. In the example, I’ve chosen Cooper Std Black on the Macintosh platform, 384 pt, centered. Click in the center of the document window and type your text (I [space] NY in the example). As soon as you begin typing, a new text layer is added  to the document above the image layer.

3. Click the Move tool icon in the Tools palette and position the text accordingly. Notice that the name of the type layer in the Layers palette automatically displays what was typed. Press F/Ctrl+[ (left bracket) to position the type layer underneath the image layer. The type will disappear in the document window because the opaque image layer above it in the palette now covers it up.

4. Create a group by Option/Alt+clicking between the type layer and the image layer above it in the Layers palette. The image will be automatically cropped inside the text characters. If you’d like to adjust which part of the image is visible, you can select the image layer and use the Move tool to reposition the image inside the letters.

5. To take the image one step further, select the type layer and apply a style to it. You can do so by choosing Window --> Styles to display the Styles palette, and then clicking on a style. In the example shown here, the Translucent Glass style from the Glass Buttons style set is applied and a drop shadow has been added to it.

6. Finally, to complete this print graphic, a shape layer is added above the clipping mask by using the Custom Shape tool. Acustom heart shape is drawn and a red color is applied. For consistency, the same layer styles that were applied to the type are also applied to the heart shape.