VPA104 Workshop Displacement Maps

Displacement Mapping for realistic textures Displacement mapping is a great way to combine an image with texture for more realistic blending. In this tutorial, we will add peeling paint texture to a woman’s face.

IMAGES: In the resource folder for the WEEK 11 WORKSHOP you will find a portrait image and several choices for textures. Choose whichever texture you like, but the following instructions will use the peeling paint texture.

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WORKSHOP

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STEP 1: Open up your two documents, the portrait and your chosen texture image, in Photoshop CC 2017.

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STEP 2: OPEN UP THE CHANNELS PALETTE (IF YOU CAN’T SEE IT, GO TO WINDOWS>CHANELS).

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With your channel palette open, click on each of the green, red and blue channels to find the one that has the highest amount of contrast. In the case of this image, I chose BLUE, but you have a look and see which one you think has the most contrast.

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STEP 3: With the highest contrast channel selected, go to the drop down menu in the channels palette and select ‘duplicate channel’.

Rename it “Displacement” and then click “OK”.

NOTE: THE FILE YOU WILL USE FOR DISPLACEMENT SHOULD ALWAYS BE A .PSD FILE.

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Choose to save the channel as “New”.

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STEP 4: Your new “Displacement” document will automatically open. Go to FILTER>NOISE>MEDIAN to add the Median Filter. Set it at a range where you can still make out the most important edges, but the finer detaisl are blurred (depends on the image, but for this one, about 27px).

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STEP 5: Add a Gussian Blur. Go to FILTER>BLUR>GUSSIAN BLUR. Set it again to a point where a lot of the details are blurred by the edges are still recognisable.

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STEP 6: Convert to Grayscale. Go to IMAGE>MODE>GRAYSCALE. Save “Displacement.psd” in your folder with the other images for this workshop.

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STEP 7: Switch back to your original portrait image. MAKE SURE THAT YOUR RBG CHANNEL IS SELECTED. Now use the selection tool of your choice (pen tool, quick selection, magic wand tool, etc - with this image, the magic wand tool works well if you select the background and then invert your selection, but make sure also that you ensure the selection doesn’t have any extra pixels selected that you won’t want to include).

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STEP 8: Save the selection AS A NEW CHANNEL (see inset image below), then Ctl+D (PC) or Command+D on a Mac to deselect area.

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STEP 9: Now go to your open texture image and with the background layer selected, use the drop down menu to “duplicate layer’. CHOOSE TO DUPLICATE TO OUR PORTRAIT IMAGE.

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Your document should look a bit like this.

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STEP 10: When you saved your selection, Photoshop automatically saved it with the name you gave it, in your channels palette. Open the channels palette and load the selection by clicking on the thumbnail image while holding down the COMMAND key (Ctrl on a PC).

STEP 13: Blend the layer. Try different blends until you get the right one. Multiply or overlay work well.

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STEP 12: With the texture layer selected, create a layer mask.

Step 15: Add the displacement map (FILTER>DISTRORT>DISPLACE).

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Step 13: Unlink the layer mask and texture image by deselecting the chain link in between them. Then hold down the Command key (Mac) or Ctrl key (PC) to select the texture.

Step 16: Set measurements 20 x 20 on the horizonal and vertical axes. Leave everything else as is.

TIP: Try different textures and apply different blends to the textures to get different results.

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Step 15: Choose the image you saved as “Displacement.psd”.

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