Micrography in Photoshop

I'm not a photoshop expert by any means. I'm not even a graphic designer. I'm a musician. I just want to know how the heck this works.

My cousin's friend Carson is the guy who does this marvelous work for LA Pop Art:

It's the entire movie script turned into the poster.

It's inspired by ancient Jewish Micrography like this:


I asked him how he does it, and he quite vaguely replied by saying he "uses photoshop" to plan stuff out before he draws it.

I'm just wondering how exactly he takes a pre-existing image like this:

and so precisely re-creates it, with all of the movie's script perfectly packed into the image. I know he draws it all by hand and it takes hundreds of hours, but he must somehow plan out where exactly all of the text is going to be before hand.

Heres a crop of another example:

It's all of the text from the entire book. Notice how in white areas like on Dorthy's shirt, the text is spaced out to create lightning effects? How does he lay it out so perfectly? If he has the text ready on his computer, how does he account for the differences between his handwriting and the computer fonts? Notice how the text stretches and shrinks? How would he plan for/account for that? And how does he plan the coloring/shading?

I'm completely baffled.

anyone?:confused:

hi,
just a novice but it basically simple... it doesn't take hundreds of manhours unelss yur doing a lot stuff....

in word processor set it up there no carrage returns or indentations, etc....
in photoshop
1. open your main image,
2. . find the font you want to use...
3. then open up a text layer
4. then copy the text from your word processore and paste into your text layer, you may need to adjust and align
5. and maybe adjust the opacity .... now that the short version

now this persons, rachjm his little tutorial supperior to mine... by far

That should be easy enough. What I'd do is:

1 - Open your image - right click and choose "Layer from background > OK"
2 - Choose "Image > Adjustments > Desaturate"
3 - Create a new text layer (click+drag to draw a text box that's the same size as your canvas)
4 - Copy and paste your Word document text (in black) into the text box
5 - Drag your text layer so that it's underneath your image layer
6 - Add a plain white bacgkround layer (Shift+CTRL+N, then fill with paint bucket) and make sure that it's underneath all of your other layers
7 - Right-click on your main, grayscale image and select "Create clipping mask"


I hope that enough to get yo started........ good luck

voyager said:

I'm not a photoshop expert by any means. I'm not even a graphic designer. I'm a musician. I just want to know how the heck this works.

My cousin's friend Carson is the guy who does this marvelous work for LA Pop Art:

It's the entire movie script turned into the poster.

It's inspired by ancient Jewish Micrography like this:

I asked him how he does it, and he quite vaguely replied by saying he "uses photoshop" to plan stuff out before he draws it.

I'm just wondering how exactly he takes a pre-existing image like this:

and so precisely re-creates it, with all of the movie's script perfectly packed into the image. I know he draws it all by hand and it takes hundreds of hours, but he must somehow plan out where exactly all of the text is going to be before hand.

Heres a crop of another example:

It's all of the text from the entire book. Notice how in white areas like on Dorthy's shirt, the text is spaced out to create lightning effects? How does he lay it out so perfectly? If he has the text ready on his computer, how does he account for the differences between his handwriting and the computer fonts? Notice how the text stretches and shrinks? How would he plan for/account for that? And how does he plan the coloring/shading?

I'm completely baffled.

Thanks for the response!

I only meant that it takes him hundreds of hours to do the actual drawing, not the computer work. The drawings are all like 9 feet tall.

I'm going to give this a try and see how it goes.:D

hey voyager.

i know that dude carson (he lives in san clemente right?) and i know he didnt draw those pieces you posted. The Res Dogs and Oz posters you posted were drawn by a different artist. So not sure what that guy carson is talking about. i also know he always advertises that it takes him hundreds of hours. it doesnt. he does it in a couple weeks. carson only did like a handful of pieces for that company. most were dont by a much better artist. carsons pieces look like amature stuff compared to the main artist for the company. carson has a rep of being real shady - so i wouldnt take much of what he says seriously.

as far as if you can prep this with photoshop? carson used to tell me that he just jumped right in. no photoshop - just drawing. who knows with that guy.