Texturing with Displacement Maps

The Displace filter in Photoshop has been around for a long time but not many people use it. In this tutorial I'm not going to explain this filter in depth, there are allot of places on the internet you can go and learn more about it.

The usual way to add textures to a object is to add the texture layer above the object layer and turn the blending mode to overlay. I'm going to take it one step further but using the displace filter to manipulate the texture to match the contours of the object.

1

I start with a pumpkin and then add a photo of a skull in a layer above the it. Change the blending mode to overlay and mask out anything I don't want.

2

Now that the skull in in position I'm going to create a displace map which nothing more than a flat, single channel PSD file. The way I like to do this is to right click on the title bar and select duplicate... .

I duplicate the file so I can now work on it with out ruining the original. Change the skull layer blending mode to normal. Increase the contrast of the skull so there is more black and white areas. Click on the background/pumpkin layer and fill it with 50% gray (edit > fill > 50% gray). Flatten the image and convert it to grayscale (image > mode > grayscale) and save it as a PSD file.

Note: The reason for increasing the contrast in the skull is because the displace filter will distort an image according to the grayscale tones. Black tones will distort down and to the right while white tones will distort up and to the left. Middle gray tones (128) will not distort at all.






3

Ok back to the original image. click on the pumpkin and duplicate the layer. This will be the layer that we displace. With this layer selected, click Filter > Distort > Displace.

In the displace box you have to select how much distortion you want in the horizontal and vertical scale boxes. Here I have 20% because I work with large files, so depending on your file size you will have to experiment with different settings. Click OK and another box will open asking for a displacement map. Point it to the skull one that we made.






4

Mouse over the image to the right to see the before and after. Instead of the lines on the pumpkin just running in a straight line, they they turn and twist to the contours of the skull. Now you might say that its not that big a difference and why should I go through all of that. Well What's separate a good manipulation from an average one is details and doing this method is just one of those details.




This method is not the only way of using Displace or is it the best way, this is the way I use it. There are ways to make photos distort 4 ways using 2 channel displace maps. The things you can do with this filter are endless. If you would like to know more about the Displace filter I suggest you go to The Guru's Network or just do a search for it. I hope that this basic tutorial helps and Good Luck.