I’m pretty sure that Corey Barker over at Layers Magazine is the person who originally did this effect.
So, what you are going to be doing, is using some type and the pattern maker inside of Photoshop to make a background. It’s a really cool effect, and remember that this isn’t necessarily limited to type – you could also use an image for another cool effect.
To practise on, create a new file 800px X 600px @ 72 dpi and fill it with a colour. You can see in the image below that I used blue. Grab your type tool and type something, I also did a drop shadow and stroke on the text. Go ahead now and duplicate the text layer and turn off the original text layer. You should now have something similar to the image below.
When you go into the Pattern Maker it is going to ask you to rasterize the type click OK, also, the text will be white and won’t stand out very well against the transparent b/ground. If you haven’t got white text, that is OK. If you have and you want to change it (you can change it back later) go ahead now and fill the text with another colour – I used the same blue as my b/ground.
Once you’ve changed the colour of the text, click on Filter>Pattern Maker>Click OK when the small dialogue box appears – then you will be inside the pattern maker filter. Something to make sure you have correct before you proceed – on the upper right hand side of the …. very … large pattern maker dialogue box is a small button with Use Image Size on it – make sure that you click on that. It should be the same as your original image size – mine is 800 X 600, yours will be whatever you made it.
You can see in the above image that I have made a selection around the text using the marquee tool, which is the first of the tools located at the top left hand side of the dialogue box. You’ll notice that the selection is just a little off centre – there is more free space to the top and left of the text – you can do this to the bottom and left etc., – but try not to select the text square on. Then you can go ahead and press Generate and you can keep pressing Generate Again until you come up with something you like. At the bottom right hand side of the dialogue you will notice that you can also scroll back and forward through the patterns you have generated and even save them as a preset pattern if you like. Once you find something that you like – click OK and see what happens :-)
If you want to change the text back to white on the pattern you just generated – lock the transparency of the layer and fill it with white. Drag the layer that you generated the pattern on below the original text layer. I went ahead and changed the blend mode of the pattern layer to soft light and reduced the opacity to 20%, I also enlarged the original text a little bit.
You can go ahead and mask out some of the new pattern by adding a layer mask and using the gradient tool – change blend modes to see what you come up with – only use the pattern on part of another image etc., Below is my finished image, but you can carry on trying out different filters on this to your hearts content :-) Also, using a single word might give a better effect.
