Step 8: Apply The Threshold Adjustment To The Layer Mask

To make the image inside the text look less like a photo and more like an interesting texture, we'll use Photoshop's Threshold image adjustment. Photoshop allows us to apply some (but not all) of its image adjustments directly to layer masks, and the Threshold adjustment is one of the ones we can use. The Threshold adjustment takes all of the colors (or shades of a gray) in an image and converts them to either black or white, greatly reducing the amount of detail in the image.

You should be seeing a white highlight border appearing around the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers palette. This tells us that the layer mask is currently selected. If you don't see the highlight border around the thumbnail, click on it to select it. Then go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choose Adjustments, and then choose Threshold:

This brings up the Threshold dialog box and right away, you'll see a change in the appearance of your text, with some areas of solid color remaining visible and other areas now hidden from view. The actual areas that are hidden will depend entirely on the photo you're using for your texture:

You can control how much of an impact the texture photo has on the text by dragging the small slider at the bottom of the Threshold dialog box left or right. Remember, the Threshold adjustment takes everything in the image and converts it to either solid black or solid white, and on a layer mask, which is where the texture photo is sitting, areas of white reveal those parts of the layer while areas of black hide those parts of the layer. As you drag the slider towards the left, more and more of the texture photo will be forced to white by the Threshold adjustment, which means that more and more of the text will become visible. Dragging the slider towards the right will force more of the texture photo to black, which means more of the text will be hidden. Exactly where you drag the slider to will depend entirely on the photo you're using for the texture and the effect you're going for, so you'll definitely want to keep an eye on your text as you drag the slider until you've achieved the result you want. Since my text is almost unreadable at the moment, I'm going to drag my slider quite a ways over to the left to reduce the impact of the texture:

With more of my texture photo being forced to white, more of the text is now visible in the document:

Step 9: Unlink The Layer Mask From The Text Layer

If you're happy with the results of the effect, you can stop here, but if you want to resize the photo or move it around inside the text, click on the small link icon between the type layer's thumbnail and the layer mask thumbnail. This will unlink the layer mask from the text, allowing us to move our texture photo around in the layer mask without moving the text itself:

Step 10: Resize And / Or Move The Texture Photo With Free Transform

With the texture photo on the layer mask and the text no longer bound together, press Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up Photoshop's Free Transform box and handles around the texture photo. Drag any of the corner handles to resize it. Hold down Shift as you drag the handles to constrain the proportions of the photo if you don't want to distort its shape. Add the Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key while dragging a handle to resize the photo from its center rather than from the corner. To move the photo around inside the text, simply click anywhere inside the Free Transform box and drag the image with your mouse:

Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to exit out of the Free Transform command and you're done! Here is my final textured photo result:

And there we have it!

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