Okay so today I tried making that LeBron “smiling through it all” meme everyone’s using. Thought it’d be easy peasy until I actually opened Photoshop. Here’s how my hot mess turned into something decent.
Step one: Finding the dang picture
Spent forever scrolling through Getty Images trying to get that perfect suffering-with-a-smile shot. Typed “LeBron James stressed smile” like an idiot. Finally got it from some meme subforum after 20 minutes of garbage Google results. Saved it as “lebron_*” on my desktop.
Step two: Cropping nightmare
Opened it in Photoshop and realized I gotta cut LeBron out clean. Used the magic wand tool first – total disaster. Background stuck to his hair like glue. Switched to pen tool instead, sweating bullets tracing every curl. Took like 30 clicks just around his ear. Rage-quit twice before finishing.
Step three: Adding funny text
Wanted something relatable so I typed:
“When the wifi dies during your Zoom interview but you keep nodding”
Chose Impact font obviously, bright yellow with black outline. Realized the text covered half his face – rookie mistake. Messed with layer positions forever until it floated nicely over his shoulder.
Step four: The crying emoji touch
Crucial detail! Grabbed that laughing/crying emoji from my phone, emailed it to myself. Pasted it next to LeBron’s forehead. Made it way too big at first – looked like an alien parasite. Scaled it down to 15% size and added tear drop using brush tool. Couldn’t get the blue right until I sampled tears from a meme template.
Final save and regret
Exported as PNG but it looked crunchy. Remembered to check “convert to sRGB” on export settings – fixed the weird color shift. Posted it on my stories. Got three likes. My cousin said LeBron’s smile looked photoshopped (it wasn’t). Still counts as a win though.
What I’d do different next time:
- Screenshots from NBA press conferences give cleaner backgrounds
- Make emoji WAY smaller than you think
- Add subtle motion blur to text – makes it feel “memeier”
- Just screenshot Twitter memes and edit text in MS Paint (kidding… kinda)
