Today I’d like to share one of my favorite photoshop techniques – combining images and text. This is a simple way to add a little something extra to a font in blog posts, blog headers, etc.

You can combine photos and text using any version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, but I’ll be doing this tutorial using Photoshop CC. I am also using a Mac so of course the commands are a little different.

For this project, it’s helpful to use a tiled workspace. You can do this by choosing Window >> Arrange >> 3-up Stacked from the main menu.

First, open a blank document and add some text of your choosing. When combining images and text, it’s a nice idea to use large bold fonts in order to see the picture well. As you can see from the layer panel above, I separated my text into two layers. I wanted the photos to be combined with the bold words “photos” and “text” but not the smaller words or the ampersand.

Go to the image you’d like to insert into the text, Select All (⌘-A) and Copy (⌘-C).

Return to the document with text and paste (⌘-V) the image onto the document. In the layer panel, command click (or right click) and choose “Create Clipping Mask”. Or you can use the shortcut Command-Option-G.

Resize the photograph over the text if you’d like.

I decided to use two different photos, so once I was happy with the way the floral picture was placed over the word “PHOTOS”, I merged those layers.

To add the second photo to the word “TEXT”, I followed the same exact steps. Copy the image, paste the image onto the text, ‘Create Clipping Mask’. Pretty simple, huh?

Lastly, merge down the layers and unhide any hidden layers. Add a background color if you’d like.

And that’s all. :)

I’ve been planning to share more tutorials involving Photoshop, Blog Design, CSS, etc. If you have any specific tutorial requests please let me know!