Prepare the image

The first order of business is to simplify the source image where possible. With the Pen tool set to draw a path, I drew around the head and shoulders, then on the Layers panel, held down the Cmd/Ctrl key, and clicked the Add Vector Mask icon. Next, I added a Color Fill layer of solid white and dragged it to the bottom of the layer stack.

To make the image monochromatic I added a Black & White adjustment layer. To boost the contrast I added a Levels adjustment, moving the white point slider far enough to the left that the highlights on the face fell away to white. I then combined the image layer and the adjustment layer into a layer group.

Prepare the type

Above the image group, on a new layer, I pasted the text of The Metamorphosis. In Microsoft Word, I had previously removed any returns so that the type became a solid block, better suited to shading. Chapter breaks and indents are of no use here; what you want is a wall of text. At the end of the day, the text won’t be readable, but parts of it will be recognizable, and for that reason it deserves our careful consideration. I used Kepler, designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe, named after German astronomer Johannes Kepler, and inspired by classic Modern (Didone) 18th century typefaces. As well as being gorgeously elegant, it’s quite condensed, making it easier to fit in as much of the text as possible.

In fact, the need to fit as much text as possible led me to my next text formatting choice, which was to reduce the Word Spacing, the Letter Spacing, and the Auto Leading settings in the Justification options (Cmd+Option+Shift+J/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J or found on the Paragraph panel menu). By squeezing out the white space between the words and letters I am adding density to the type. I then copied the type layer twice (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and named the layers Midtones, Shadows, and Background.

Selecting the tonal ranges

Now, with the type filling the whole canvas and overlapping the portrait, it’s time to identify the tonal ranges.

At this point, I turned off the visibility of the type layers to concentrate on the image. In the Color Range dialog (Select > Color Range), I made a selection of the midtones (you can adjust the range numerically if you wish to make the selection bigger or smaller) and then converted the selection into a layer mask, which I applied to the Midtones layer. I then hid the Midtones layer and repeated this process, this time choosing shadows in Color Range and applying the resulting selection and layer mask to the Shadows layer. To retain some dimension in the image, I chose to keep some of the original portrait visible at an opacity of 30%.

To introduce a tonal distinction between the two type layers, I added a Color Overlay layer effect to the Midtones layer and changed the color to a 50% gray (128, 128, 128 in RGB). To boost the contrast of the Shadows, I simply duplicated the layer, Cmd/Ctrl+J.

Add the background shading

In order for the shaded type of the Background layer to be visible only outside of the figure, I needed a mask in the shape of the figure, and the quickest way to get that is to borrow the mask from the image layer. I activated a selection from the vector mask by Cmd/Ctrl-clicking its thumbnail and added this as layer mask to the Background layer. To invert its values, I held Option/Alt as I clicked the Add a Layer Mask button. Alternatively, once the layer mask is made, just press Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the blacks and whites. Above this layer, I added a Gradient Fill layer. This started out as a black-to-white gradient, but I modified the colors to gradate from a 75% gray to a 25% gray. I also changed the angle of the gradient to zero so that it runs from left to right.

This type of portrait works well for an author — someone for whom words were everything. This way, as we gaze at them, their words stand like a screen between us, something we see through in order to see the person. Or perhaps this is just a way of taking literally the phrase “man of letters.”