My first Tutorial for My Blog

A "Wordle" Tutorial

Have you ever been to the Wordle website?  You can easily create your own word collage.  What if you wanted to put a picture in that collage?  Well you can actually add one of their collages to your photos, but this tutorial shows you how to do it on your own!

Open the document you want to add the words to.  Clean up your photo, run any actions you like.  I ran Moody Pop on my example.

Use your text tool to create words.  I hid my background layer so I could see the words more clear. 

Right now it doesn’t matter where you place the words, how big they are, or what font, just type.  Make sure you to put the words on separate layers.  (Click the move tool between typing the words) (See Below)

To make life easier have the auto select layers option checked on your move tool.  (See Below)

Now start free transforming, rotating, formatting and moving your text.  When choosing a font you want to pick larger, bolder fonts.  Thin fonts don't work as well.  Also, you will probably want to turn your background layer on so you can see where it overlaps your photo.

Once you have moved all of your text around and it is in the EXACT place you want it, go to your layers palette and select all of your text layers.  ( You can click on your bottom text layer, hold shift and click on your top text layer).  Go to your layer menu and Merge Layers. (See Below)

You will want to select your word layer. One of my favorite short cuts is the Cmd Click (Ctrl Click for PC) on your layer this will select your text within that layer.   

Now you will want to make a new layer via copy- so now select your background layer and Command J (creates a new layer via copy). 

Turn “off” the original word layer in your layers palette.

Now to make the words actually appear!  to do that all you have to add some blending options to your layer.  I like to do bevel and emboss and drop shadow or stroke.  You can play with the settings of these options, but the bevel and emboss is the most important option to add to the layer

You can either leave it as is or create a new layer and fill it with a color.  If you are going to do this option you would want more words than what I have below.