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Motion Blur and Displacement Map to Edit in Water

Lesson 9 from: Diving into Photoshop Filters

Khara Plicanic

Motion Blur and Displacement Map to Edit in Water

Lesson 9 from: Diving into Photoshop Filters

Khara Plicanic

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Lesson Info

9. Motion Blur and Displacement Map to Edit in Water

Lesson Info

Motion Blur and Displacement Map to Edit in Water

Okay, so here we have another image where we are going to take the reflection. So I have this text up here. Same thing. I duplicated the type and then flipped it and then distorted it. So it's in the water and look semi correct, sort of. But it hasn't been. It hasn't been affected by the ripples in the water. So that's like a clear giveaway that I mean, obviously this is Photoshopped. Text doesn't just float in space, but we don't want it to look like it was Photoshopped. We wanted to just look amazing. So here's what we're going to dio. So the type player that we're working on is here, this copy in the water. So the first thing that I'm going to do is add a little bit of a motion blur to the type because water has motion, and it's just it shouldn't just be perfectly sitting on the water. So I'm going to come up to the filter menu and to the Blur menu, and this time I'm gonna choose motion blur. So any time you're creating a reflection in water, E one of your first stops is probably go...

ing to be a bit of a motion blur. Um, So how much is the right amount? I don't know. A little bit enough to just make it not look like that. So just a little. So what is the motion blur doing? It's making it look almost like you shot it with a slow shutter. And and it was moving. So motion blurs can be used for adding motion to any If you have, like, a cyclist and you shot them with the fast shutter, so they're really frozen. But you want to add a streak behind them, you can use the motion blur. And what's cool about it is you can change the angle of the blur. Um, it's hard to see here in this particular case because I wasn't going for that kind of Ah, look, um, but you can change the angle that the blur is happening, and then the distance is just how extreme it is and how far those streaks go out. So in this case, we're gonna keep it pretty subtle, I guess. Um, and if we're not sure, we could always do this as a see, I never remember until later as a smart filter. Uh, and then we could tweak it later if we need to, so we'll keep it kind of low. All right, So the more important thing that we're going to dio is we need this reflection to be impacted by the ripples that are happening in the water. And to do that, we're going to create what's called a displacement map, and you can use displacement maps for all kinds of things. If you are putting if you have a T shirt that's got, you know, like folds in it, um, or ruffles or something, and you want to put a graphic on it, a displacement map is gonna warp the graphic around the ruffles. Or if you were gonna take, like, picture of something and put it on someone's face and you want it to warp to the contours of their face displacement map. So that's what displacement maps are for, and essentially to create them. All you do is take the image of whatever it is you want to put them on. You converted to grayscale, boost the contrast, and then save that as a displacement maps. So in this example, what we're going to do is go to the channels panel and I'm gonna hide all the other layers and we'll go to the channels panel. I'm just clicking through to see where is going to be the most contrast, and it's going to be in this image in the Red Channel. So what I'm gonna dio is come up here to the, um, menu options, and I'm going to say we're going to duplicate that channel into its own document because we'll just save it as a separate file. So what I did was came over here to the channel menu. So we're only looking at the Red Channel from the menu, uh, panel menu. We're going to say duplicate channel, and we'll call it map, and we're gonna make it in a new document just so that it's separate and lips will call the new document map. Ah, yeah. Okay, so that just keeps it. So we have our other image here, and we can go back to normal, and nothing is message. So now that we have this duplicated black and white version will convert it to gray scale, you don't know that it really has to be grayscale or if it can just be de saturated, but I've tried it both ways and I couldn't see a difference. But maybe it's just me. So to be safe, just put it in grayscale. So that's under image mode, grayscale. And then we're gonna adjust the contrast. So I'm going to press commander control L to bring up levels and I'm just going to drag this one in and drag this one in drag this over. Maybe. So what we really just want is high contrast down here, so we'll click. Okay. And then I'm gonna save this to my desktop as a map, just map PST. And apparently already have one called that so we'll just replace it and then we're done with it. So now we're back to this image and I'm going to click on the reflection layer. We'll zoom in, So oops, so we can see Oh, and something about my new computer makes Syria pop up all the time. When I do Photoshopped keyboard shortcuts and I haven't had time to figure out What is that? What's going on and how to cancel it? So sorry, Syria, But go on break. Okay, leave me alone. Okay, so now we have the reflection here happening, and we're going to go to the filter menu and choose distort, displace. And this takes some experimentation to get the numbers right that you want to use here. But basically now we get to enter some numbers in for the horizontal and vertical scale, and it's just like how distorted it's going to be by default. It's like 10 and 10 and it's pretty mild, but it depends, I think, on, you know, the size of your image and all of that. So you just have to experiment. So I was just messing around and I kind of decided I like these values, but you just won't know Tell you try it. Which is why it's nice to have the smart filters and easy to go change it, so we'll click. OK, and now it's asking for the file that you want to use as the map. So here's the file that we created. So we'll click open, and now it processed it. And now look like oh good Syria didn't come up that time. Look how that reflection if we undo that and redo it, it's kind of incredible, So this is useful for so many things Any time you're inserting, putting something on something else and you, we probably know, change the blend mode to multiply. Often times we do that wake, multiply, blend modes of bad Dick. Um, but then this is how you really bring it home, and so that will warp the logo on the shirt or the, you know, paint on the face or whatever. So that's just really I just think that's so cool. And I really had experiment, and I ended up using much higher values, like for the horizontal distortion I put in a value of 60 and I wouldn't have thought that I needed to go that high, so you just have to play with it. But now we have a really cool image, and I just want to dive right into that.

Ratings and Reviews

Amy Vaughn
 

Khara is knowledgeable, creative and has a fun and easy to understand teaching style. This class goes over some of the default Photoshop filters and offers ideas about how to use them for creative effects. My favorite new thing I learned was about displacement maps, but I'm looking forward to trying more of these out.

user-f2dcf6
 

I have been using Photoshop for many years. Although I've made use of filters now and again, I never spent time learning about them. I appreciate how clearly Khara explains filter settings and the examples she provides.

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