Okay so let me tell you about this typography lyrical edit thing, because I've been low key obsessed with it for weeks now. You know the style right, portrait sitting right in front of these massive bold letters, a sunflower peeking out from behind the hair, maybe a little butterfly floating somewhere in the corner, and the whole thing just feels layered instead of some flat boring photo with text slapped on top. I kept scrolling past edits like this and genuinely thought people were doing some next level Photoshop wizardry. Then I actually sat down one night and tried making one myself and honestly, it's way simpler than it looks once you get the order of steps right. So let me just walk you through how I do it now, mostly stuff I figured out by messing it up first, so hopefully you skip some of my mistakes.
First things first, the photo you pick actually matters a lot more than people realize. You want good lighting on the face, the subject clearly standing out from whatever's behind them, and ideally some kind of natural pose, hand near the chin, looking slightly off to the side, something with a bit of life to it. If you start with a stiff, flat looking photo, no amount of flowers or fancy typography is gonna save it later, trust me on that one. Once you've got your photo, the next thing is cutting the subject out. I usually just run the auto cutout tool first, then go in manually and clean up around the hair because let's be real, auto cutout never gets flyaway strands right, especially if there's a braid or curls involved.
Now here's the part that took me embarrassingly long to figure out, don't slap your cutout straight onto the background, build the background first. So this is where the big bold text comes in. Block letters, maybe a name, maybe just one word that fits the mood, stretched out across most of the frame. Color wise I just go with whatever feels loud enough, yellow, teal, sometimes I'll do a soft blush pink if the photo's got that softer vibe going on. Here's the actual trick though, and it took me forever to notice this on my own, the text has to sit behind where your subject's gonna go but still in front of the plain background. So when you drop the cutout on top after, it reads like the letters are literally passing behind the shoulders and the hair. That one thing right there is basically what makes the whole layered, almost 3D look happen. Skip that step and put the text fully behind everything instead, and yeah, it just turns into a poster with a photo glued on top. Flat. Kinda boring if I'm honest.
Once your subject's sitting on top of that text layer, now comes my favorite bit, the little extras. Sunflowers are pretty much my signature move at this point. Big one behind the shoulder, sometimes right near the head so it's peeking out of the hair a bit, and then maybe a smaller one closer to the face just so it doesn't feel lopsided. Butterflies come next, off to one side usually, overlapping the flower or the text a little so it's not just floating randomly in a corner like it got dropped there by accident. Rule I follow, everything touches something else. Nothing sits alone in empty space. That's honestly the number one thing that makes an edit look copy pasted instead of like you actually thought about where stuff goes.
For depth, okay, this one's a small trick but it works so well. Duplicate the subject cutout, just once, place that copy slightly behind and a little offset from the original one, drop its opacity down, throw a touch of blur on it too. That's it basically. Creates this subtle shadow thing under the hood that tricks your brain into reading everything as layered instead of flat, even though it's really just two copies of the same cutout. If you're animating instead of keeping it still, try sliding the background text in slow from one side while the subject just sits there, then scale the subject up a tiny bit over the first second, like the camera's easing in almost. And seriously, keep it small. I went way too dramatic with the motion on one of my early ones and it ended up looking chaotic instead of smooth, learned that one the hard way.
Color grading, always last for me, no exceptions. Warm the skin up a touch, push the background color a bit more saturated than it naturally is so it doesn't just fade into the photo, soft vignette around the edges to pull your eye back to the face. And honestly, if I had to give one piece of advice starting out, don't cram in every element just because the app lets you. I used to go overboard, three flowers, two butterflies, sparkle overlays, light leaks, all crammed into one single edit, and it just ended up looking messy, not good messy either. These days I stick to one flower spot, maybe one butterfly if the composition needs it, and just let the typography and the subject carry the whole thing. Comes out so much cleaner, and takes way less effort too honestly, which almost feels like cheating but hey, I'll take it.
At the end of the day it's really just layering with a bit of intention behind it. Typography background first, cleaned up subject cutout on top, small stuff like flowers or a butterfly tucked into whatever gaps are left, a duplicate layer for that subtle depth, restrained color work to close it out. Once that order sticks in your head, you stop thinking of it as randomly scattering flowers and letters around a photo and start actually building something with real depth to it. Which honestly is the whole point of this style anyway, at least the way I see it.