How To Make Money With Photoshop

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The engraving effect in Photoshop turns a portrait into the fine line art printed on a 100 dollar bill.

This is a photo effect for beginners, not a lesson in selling your work.

You build the look from five line files, one for every shade of gray in the photo. Posterize flattens the portrait into those five tones, and the Magic Wand Tool turns each tone into a layer mask.

You need Photoshop CS6 or the latest version. The video was recorded in CS6, and every tool it uses sits in the same place today.

Adobe Illustrator is optional. The five line files ship in the practice files as PNGs, so you can skip that section of the video and still finish the effect.

What You Will Learn

• How to place and stack the five engraving line files
• How to posterize a portrait into five flat tones
• How to select one tone at a time with the Magic Wand Tool
• How to turn each selection into a layer mask on a line file
• How to build the crosshatch pattern that real currency uses
• How to draw the line files yourself in Adobe Illustrator

Requirements

Keyboard Shortcuts

Step 1: Open the Starter File

Open the starter PSD from the practice files and look at the Layers panel before you touch anything.

At the bottom sits the background. It is filled with 50% gray and carries a Radial Gradient, so there is a highlight in the middle and shadow toward the edges.

Above it is a group named bill. It holds the image of a 100 dollar bill plus an oval shape that paints the soft shadow under the bill.

President Franklin has already been removed from the bill. That empty oval is where your portrait goes.

The top layer is the portrait. It is the same photo used in the Young to Old tutorial, and it was scaled to fit the oval before recording.

Step 2: Place the Engraving Effect Lines

Go to File > Place and choose the first line file, 01 very light. Click Place, click OK in the import window, then press Enter (Windows) or Return (macOS) to commit it.

You can also click the Commit Transform checkmark in the options bar. Both do the same job.

Repeat that for 02 light, 03 medium, 04 dark, and 05 darkest. Place them in order so the thinnest lines sit at the bottom of the stack.

Zoom in and compare them. The very light file is a row of short dashes following a wave. The light file drops the dashes for long continuous waves, and each file after that is drawn with a heavier stroke.

Select the 03 medium layer and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Rename the layer 03 medium flip so you remember what changed.

Do the same to 05 darkest. Those two flipped layers are what create the crosshatch pattern later, because their waves run against the waves underneath.

Click the top line layer, hold Shift, and click the bottom one. Press CtrlG (Windows) or CommandG (macOS) to group all five, then name the group engraving.

Turn the visibility off on all five layers. You will switch them back on one at a time.

Optional: Build the Lines in Adobe Illustrator

Skip this section if you do not have Illustrator. The practice files already include all five line files as PNGs, and Step 3 picks up right where Step 2 left off.

Still here? Go to File > New and make a document the same size as your Photoshop file, 1080 by 720 in the video.

Grab the Line Segment Tool, set the fill to none and the stroke to black, then drag one line from the left edge of the canvas to the right edge. Set the stroke weight to 0.75 points.

In the Layers panel, drag the line layer onto the New Layer icon to duplicate it.

Hold ShiftDown Arrow (Windows) or ShiftDown Arrow (macOS) to nudge the copy 10 pixels down, then press the Up Arrow twice. That leaves an 8 pixel gap between the two lines.

Select both lines and press CtrlG (Windows) or CommandG (macOS) to move them onto a single layer. Delete the empty layer left behind.

Repeat until the canvas is full. Draw more lines than you need, because rotating the set later has to leave the corners covered.

Select every line and go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Zig Zag. Turn on Preview, choose Smooth instead of Corner, set Size to 10 pixels and Ridges per Segment to 10.

Rotate the layer to the angle you want. That tilt is what sells the engraved look.

Draw a rectangle the size of the canvas with the Rectangle Tool, remove its fill and stroke, select it with the lines, then go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make. Everything past the canvas edge is hidden.

Use File > Save As to save one file per shade. For the lightest file, turn on Dashed Line with a 6 point dash and a 2 point gap. For the darker files, turn the dashes off and raise the stroke weight, up to about 8 points for the darkest.

Step 3: Prep the Photo for the Engraving Effect

Duplicate the portrait layer. Turn the bottom copy off and leave it alone, because Step 6 needs the untouched original.

Click the top copy and add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Drag Saturation all the way down to strip the color out.

That adjustment currently hits the dollar bill too. Clip it to the portrait so it does not.

Hold Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and click the line between the adjustment layer and the portrait. The cursor turns into a small square with a down pointing arrow, and the click creates a Clipping Mask.

Add a Curves adjustment layer next and clip it the same way.

Drag an S curve into it, lifting the highlights and dropping the shadows. The flat original will not separate into clean tones, so this contrast is doing real work.

Step 4: Posterize the Photo Into Five Levels

Add a Posterize adjustment layer on top and clip it to the portrait as well.

Posterize reduces the photo to a set number of flat tones. Two levels gives you pure black and pure white. Three adds a mid gray. Push it to 255 and you get the original photo back.

Set Levels to 5. You have five line files, so you need five tones to hand them.

Turn the bill layer off while you work here. It is distracting, and you want to read the face.

Click the duplicated portrait, hold Shift, and click the Posterize layer to select the whole stack. Press CtrlG (Windows) or CommandG (macOS) and name the group sample.

That group is only a source. You sample selections from it and never see it in the final image.

A comic book drawing effect works the same way, using a flattened copy to drive the ink layer.

Step 5: Mask Each Engraving Effect Shade

Click the Posterize layer, then pick the Magic Wand Tool.

In the options bar, uncheck Contiguous and set Tolerance to 1. With Contiguous on, a click only grabs pixels touching each other, and a posterized face scatters its tones all over the frame.

Turn the background layer off first. Its gray confuses the selection.

Click one of the white areas on the face. Every white pixel in the photo is now selected.

Not much white to click? Go back to the Curves layer and push the highlights until the nose, cheeks, and forehead go white, then darken the shadows for balance.

Open the engraving group, turn on 01 very light, click the layer, and click the Add Layer Mask icon. The dashes now appear only in the brightest parts of the face.

Work down the stack. Select the next darkest gray on Posterize, turn on the matching line layer, and add a layer mask to it.

The flipped layers need one extra move, because a gray selection alone gives you crossing lines in that tone and nothing above it.

Hold Ctrl (Windows) or Command (macOS) and click the mask you just made to load it as a selection. Click the mask on the lighter layer below and fill that selection with white.

That is the crosshatch. Do it for every darker shade, filling white into each lighter mask underneath, so the dark areas carry several sets of lines at once.

For the darkest tone, click anywhere in the hair. It is already black, so one click selects the whole thing.

Step 6: Add the Photocopy Outline

Lines alone read as texture. The face needs an outline to read as a portrait.

Turn the original portrait layer back on, the copy you set aside in Step 3, and convert it to a Smart Object.

Press D (Windows) or D (macOS) to reset the foreground to black and the background to white.

Go to Filter > Filter Gallery > Sketch > Photocopy. Set Detail to 1 and drag Darkness up to 50, then click OK.

You want the outline of the face and nothing more, so keep Detail low. A higher Detail value drags mid tones into the result and muddies the lines.

Change the layer blending mode to Multiply so the white drops out and only the black outline stays.

Drag that layer into the engraving group to keep the file tidy.

Step 7: Mask the Engraving Effect to the Bill

Select the engraving group itself and set its blending mode to Multiply. The white areas between the lines disappear and the paper shows through.

Turn the bill layer back on and remove the Color Overlay from the background layer.

The lines currently run past the bottom of the oval. Mask them to the oval to fix it.

Pick the Magic Wand Tool again. This time set Tolerance to 32 and turn Contiguous back on.

Click the bill layer itself, not the bill group, then click in the middle of the oval. The wand grabs the whole opening in one go.

Select the engraving group and click Add Layer Mask. The portrait is now trapped inside the oval, exactly like the frame on a real bill.

Step 8: Add the Diamond Background Pattern

Every bill has a printed pattern behind the portrait. That is the last piece.

Go to File > Place and choose the squares file from the practice files. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (macOS) to commit it.

Rotate the layer about 45 degrees so the squares read as diamonds. Straight squares look like a grid, and diamonds look like currency.

Hold Ctrl (Windows) or Command (macOS) and click the portrait layer thumbnail to load a selection around the person.

Click the squares layer and click Add Layer Mask. Right now the pattern sits on the face, which is backwards.

Click the new mask and press CtrlI (Windows) or CommandI (macOS) to invert it. The pattern flips behind the portrait and the effect is done.

Step 9: Refine the Engraving Effect by Hand

Some areas will land too light or too dark. Every mask you built is still fully editable.

Pick the Brush Tool and choose a hard round brush. A soft brush feathers the line edges and the engraving turns to mush.

Click the mask on any line layer and paint with white to bring those lines back in. Paint with black to take them away.

Painting white on the flipped medium layer adds crosshatching wherever you drag. Painting black on it leaves straight lines only.

Press Z (Windows) or Z (macOS) for the Zoom Tool and work at around 200%. That is close enough to judge the lines and far enough to judge the face.

There is no correct amount here. Push it until the portrait reads the way you want it to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Your Engraving Effect in Photoshop

Five line files, one Posterize adjustment, and a handful of layer masks. That is the whole engraving effect in Photoshop.

Nothing in it is advanced. The only part that takes patience is masking each shade in order, and the file stays editable the entire time.

Try the same line masking on a coin next, or follow the realistic coin tutorial to build one from scratch.

Watch the full tutorial above to see every step in real time, and comment on the video if you get stuck.

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Selections and Masking Mastery

Complete course includes 2.5 hours of step-by-step lessons, 6 structured modules, downloadable practice files, and custom Photoshop brushes. Everything you need to master selections and masks in one place.

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