Photoshop Tutorial: Fake Character Art

I think you have seen this trick before - did you ever received a funny e-mail with well known picture but a little strange than any picture? A picture painted with characters?! Yup, I think you have seen it before and it's very cool ...

In this tutorial you will learn how to make this trick all by yourself.

Step #1:
- Open the art picture to apply the trick on it , or any picture you want as long as it was an RGB photo ..
- If you want to make sure just go to Image>Mode> and make sure that the RGB color type is selected , If not you can click on it to change your photo to RGB color mode .
- In our case I will apply the fake char trick to the well know "Mona Lisa" Picture .
- Now after you opened your photo in Photoshop just duplicate your photo layer , in you photo you will see a layer called background in layers palate , All you have to do is to drag this layer to the " CREATE NEW LAYER " Icon , now you have a copy layer from your photo.
- Now hide the first layer by clicking the " EYE " Icon which appears beside the original photo layer in the layer palate .

Now we are ready to go .
Take a look at the attached image .

Step #2:
In this step we will cover the photo with text ,
- Select your Horizontal type tool from your tool box .
- Now we need to modify the text parameters ,
My recommendations is : 6,7 or 8 for the text size , Arial or vendra for the font type .
' THE TEXT COLOR IS NOT IMPORTANT '
- Click on the top right corner of your photo and start typing any characters , to make it a little easy for you just write and start copy and pasting .
- Make sure that the text is all over your photo .

Take a look at the attached image .

Step #3:
- Select you photo layer .
- With you photo layer selected , click on " ADD LAYER MASK " Icon in the layer palate .
- Now we need to make a selection around the text , So select your text layer and press CTRL (or Command if you are using Mac) Then Click on the "T" character appears in the text layer with your left mouse click . you will notice that there is a selection around the text .
Actually, we need to select the area around the text or the character , so all we have to do now is to inverse this selection .
- With the text layer still selected , Click 'Ctrl+I' (or 'command+I' if you are using MAC) , Or you can just select Inverse from the select menu .

Keep this selection we will need it.

Take a look at the attached image.

Step #4:
- Press D , now your foreground layer is black .
- Click on the new mask that you already created to your photo layer .
- Go To EDIT>FILL , in Fill dialog box chose foreground "BLACK" .

Now the Mask is covered with black within the selection , and that's all we need for now,

- Go to the select menu and chose deselect .

All you have to do now is to create a new layer and fill it with black.

- In the layer palate click the "CREATE NEW LAYER " Icon, then drag it to the bottom of your first layer to act as a background .

Take a look at the Final Image.

Done....
Is it cool or what ? ...

Until next time, have fun.