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3:00 pm - Displacement Maps

Lesson 19 from: Adobe Photoshop: Retouching and Collage

Ben Willmore

3:00 pm - Displacement Maps

Lesson 19 from: Adobe Photoshop: Retouching and Collage

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

19. 3:00 pm - Displacement Maps

Lesson Info

3:00 pm - Displacement Maps

What I would like to do here is this is a picture of me what I looked like when I started teaching photo shop that was nineteen years ago. Uh, and these days I would have a cooler shirt on, so I want to give myself a cooler shirt. I want to do it by coming up with some sort of pattern to apply. You saw the shirt of war yesterday than she had had little planets on it and stuff, you know, it would be wearing something more like that. Well, let's say I found a fabric I'd like to use, and somehow I need to make it look as if whatever it is I found has the same wrinkles is the shirt in it, so that means I need to take whatever detail it isthe in bend it where it's, closer, wherever a wrinkle is further away, where there's no wrinkle and so on to accomplish that, I'm just going to create a brand new layer, and I'm gonna put something in that letter that will be our pattern. Uh, I'm going to go to the edit menu and choose phil. One of things I can fill with is a pattern, and over here I can c...

hoose which pattern I'd like, I happen to have one that looks like bricks. I made it. I think one of the previous creative life classes might have been during a break, though I remember, uh, and I'm just going to fill this layer and actually, before I do that, I also want to change the scale setting because that's kind of big break so let's fill er see here pattern, we're gonna let me scale it. I don't see a setting for scale, so let's do it a different way. I'm going to instead go over here in use something that is called a pattern layer because with a pattern layer is going to give me on more control with a pattern layer aiken choose my pattern and we have a scale setting where I could bring it down twenty size I want now I want to make this a normal layer of where I can do anything I want to it and apply a filter in such a way where it's not permanent. Well, to do that I'm going to come up and actually trained into a smart object. You know how we've gone here? Tio convert things to a smart object there's, a different command that does the exact same thing but it's worded differently and it's in a place that's easier to get to, but keep in mind it does exactly the same as this command. What that is is you go to the filter menu and choose convert for smart filters all that does is convert you layer into smart object so let's do it all right now before I end up trying to distort this, we need to get something prepared to make it work and to do that I'm going to just hide this pattern and work on the image that's below we need to create a simplified version of this image I'll do that by duplicating the image so we're working a separate file and I'm going to simplify it by changing the mode of the image to gray scale because when any color I'll tell to flatten when it asked me because we don't need any layers either I'm also going to simplify it because we don't need the fine detail that's in here, the pores on the face and others light details so I'll go to the filter menu I'll choose blur and I'll use gazi and blur. What I want is to find a setting that is just enough to get rid of the fine details but not so much that I can't recognize what the picture looks like we'll probably around there but I should be looking at the shirt as well just to make sure I don't see a lot of any of the weave of the fabric or anything like that you want to get rid of that kind of detail so if you think about what we've done here I duplicated the layer I got rid of layers I got rid of color and I got rid of fine detail by blurring now going to save this image when I say that I'm just going to use photoshopped file format saving on my desktop after that I can close it but before I close it let's look at what father shops going to use it for photo shop is going to think of this is a description for how this image appears in three dimensional space it's going to think of bright things as being close to you dark things is being far away from you in fifty percent gray things is being normal meaning wherever you started with your image so it's going to use the brightness values of this to bend our picture where wherever this is getting dark is going to push it further away from us wherever it's bright it's going to push it closer and if there's an area fifty percent gray it's not going to push the image at all but I don't need this to be here open and photo shop so I got to close that file get back to our original here I'll go back up to our layer that's called pattern and I'm just going to go to the filter menu is a choice called distort and that's what I'm gonna find a choice called displace filter distort displace now, in some versions of federer shop, you will find that this filter will be great out if you're working on a smart object, you have to have some of the absolute newest versions of thunder shop to be ableto displace a smart object if you find that it's simply not available. When you have a smart object active, then you'll have to go to the layer menu, choose smart objects and choose something called rast arise, rast arise means turn that into a normal layer don't make it a smart object, so if you have an old version to see, no, but if I choose filter distort displays, its going to ask me for a number that number tells me how much it's going to bend my picture. But if this was our original picture, this is what it represents our break, the number that I type in determines how far is it going to bend it up whenever it sees white benz it closer to you, black, further away kind of thing? Well, if I type in ten, maybe it bends it this much maximum fight type in twenty, it'll be twice that fight. I've been thirty, it will be choice, her three times that, and so I'm determining how mountainous is this going to become, and I have to simply guess I find tend to be a bit low for most images, the lowest I usually end up with starting with his fifteen sometimes and emphasize maybe thirty it really depends on the image will be able to try it once and then go back and change it later, so I'm just going to click ok when I click ok photoshopped will ask me for that gray scale picture it just instantly brings up unopened dialog box and I need to choose that grayscale images that I saved earlier I hit the open button and that's when it's going to bend the bricks, you see the brakes just looking kind of weird it's hard to tell if we have enough or not, but we would be able to change it later, so we'll just go with what we have for now and we'll see what it looks like once we get it somehow laying on top of the shirt where I could still see my shirt to apply this to the image and actually before I apply, let me just choose undue before after to apply it, I'm going to play with blending modes, and I've shown you before that if you're in the move to elin fetter shop that you can hold down shift in new plus and minus the cycle through what's your cycle thrown, you see it though ben and around the wrinkles in my shirt, so that's darkened mode, and I just go through here and see if I can figure out which ones I like that's multiplying mode that looks pretty good for my shirt linear burn doesn't look bad a little bit of overlay, so anyway, I need to pick one of those, so I'm going to pick whichever one I think might have looked best. Maybe I start with multiply, and then what I can do is come in here in addle air mask with layer mask I can say, where shouldn't it apply? Where I don't want it to apply at places like my tie, but you could see the bricks going right around the wrinkles catch it. I'm just painting with black on this mask I could if I wanted to make it not apply to my face, but someone you might like um, imagine I was a little more precise here. What I could do is go back to just the image and use the quick selection tool to try to get the background. I'm not sure how precise that'll be, but go back to my mask, turn that layer back on and I can fill with black I could go to the edit menu to fill with black or command elite means fill with my background color, I think the option leads, sir, that optionally fills my four round color. What I didn't notice is when I switched to the mask, the two colors reversed. So now we have some of this. It all depends. We wanted on my face on my shirt. Maybe we should vote. No. Come down here. All right, so we got it on my shirt. Uh, let's. See if we can modify it, make it look a little better and fine tune our results might also want to get it off my hand there. But is it giving you the general look that the brics air bending with a shirt? Uh, so this is only gonna work, though, was simple objects that don't contain a lot of busy detail. So if it is a solid colored object, um then you're usually going to be fine if it's an object like a tree or something not going to work so well, because the brightness isn't going toe quite define it as well. Although if it's just a straight bark of the tree and not a bunch of leaves and other things sticking within, it could still be used quite a bit. Ah, but let's, take a look at the little details of it, so we have the part called displaced here attached to this layer if I double click on the word displace it will be bring me back into the filter let's see what it looks like if I use a different setting remember I used fifteen let's see what happens if I used ten when I click on okay it'll ask me for that file it once again and now I'll just choose undue we'll see the difference okay this is ten this is fifteen can you see the difference if you look especially right here look at how high this is compared to here this is ten that's fifteen so I went to thirty this would get pushed even further and so it's a matter of evaluating the image to see if you think it's moving enough then quick question lohan is wondering some photographers put a negative number for the second number when using a distortion map what if anything does that change? Uh I'm not used to putting a negative number, so I'm not sure the exact logic there but in general one of these is doing something horizontally. The other is doing it vertically. So is to the best of my knowledge of you would to put in a negative for one it would be moving in the opposite direction but I'm not used to thinking that way so I don't know exactly assed far as that goes nobody uses it in different ways and collins is in colorado is wondering if the horizontal and vertical numbers always need to match and remain the same. For example, you have fifteen and and sure they don't have to but to make things simple, I usually almost always have the match the same one would say how much is it going to push the image like towards your far away but on the horizontal direction and how much is it going to do it in the vertical direction if you have them be identical it's treating the image as a whole the same regardless of what direction it's moving it s o you could lessen it or move it the opposite direction, but I find for most of the times when I apply it, I used them identically, but there might be some good reasons to deviate, so if you heard from someone else that you know has messed with it more, you know, just keep their ideas in mind as well. Let's take a look at a few of the other choices that air in here there's a choice called displacement map either stretched to fit or tile. And what that means is the grayscale picture that saved on my hard drive um what happens is it's a different size than this file that I'm applying it to should it repeated over and over again like tiles on a wall in order to make it fill this document so it can use it across the whole document that would be the choice called tile or should we just scale it up until it fits this document for our particular use that setting doesn't matter at all because the file saved on a hard drive is exactly the same size is the image we're applying it to the file were applying it to so that's not going to matter down here words is undefined areas that means if it ends up having to move the image right on the edge of the file like right down here you see right here it looks a little odd well wants no what should do an undefined areas what that means is if it needs to move the picture in order to make it look right usually just grabs from what's next door to move it but there's nothing next door out here there's nothing beyond the edge of the file so how should it figure out what would usually be beyond here if it would usually have to push it into that area right now it's set to repeat edge pixels which is why it looks the way it does right now because all it's doing is taking whatever details on the edge and just repeating those pixels over and over and over again which ends up making him look almost like straight lines if I instead choose wrap around, it will take whatever would get pushed off the top of the document and wrap it around to the bottom. If you have a repeating texture that might look a little better, so if I choose wrap around, I'll have to click ok and feed it that image again now on notice that the edge probably will look better watch that's repeating edge pixels that's wrap around it just has to do with what's going to happen on the very edge of your document if it thinks it needs to move the image up well, if it needs to move the image up, it thinks it needs to grab that material from what's outside the document there's nothing out there so on ly thing it can do is either take the pixels that are on the edge of your image and just repeat and repeat it and repeat them to fill that in or you can take what's at the very top of your document and just kind of push it off the edge and all the way around the other side. And if you have a repeating pattern, you'll be able to most likely make it look better with that. The other thing I can do with this is to make it look even better oftentimes what I'll end up doing is lowering the opacity on this layer so it's not overly strong and then I'll duplicate the later again but taking command j and I'll just try another blending mode. We have one that's in multiply mode what was one of the other modes that I liked? Wasn't it like overlay mode? I think I'll try another one an overlay mode and all adjust its opacity as well in sometimes by doing two or three of these command jail again and just trying various blending modes in this case, I'll just cycle through them not relying on a single blending mode instead, having two or three applied at lesser strength will often give you a better looking and result then just having one, especially if you're applying it to something like skin uh, I find that two or three varying them is what's helpful. The other thing you can do is if you find that something is bending where it doesn't quite look right is you can go back into that gray scale picture that's on your hard drive and let's say, for instance, that instead of bending around my shirt I was bending around my face. Do you see the shiny spot on the tip of my nose? Well, it's going to bend things based purely on brightness we're bright things are thought of as being close to you dark things or thought of his being further away and fifty percent gray is normal so that little bitty bright spot him I felt my nose is going to make me thought of his being pinocchio it's going to be a thing sticking out because bright means closer to you so sometimes I end up going back and modifying this and I'll end up coming in and maybe using the spot healing brush for any shiny spots on skin. If I happen to be wrapping it on a face it is coming in here and tried to tone that down that's not the best move their second see the edge but I could always blur it afterwards meaning do this before you blur the image and then that would be blended right in and if I do that then that's not going to be thought of as an area that's poking out out towards the image I'll give you the same thing if this little area here that's dark looked like a little crater in the end result cause dark things are thought of as being further away you could come in here and use the dodge and burned tools ah with the dodge and burned tools the dodge tool can come in here and I could paint the light in that area up the dodge tool is going to end up lightning the burn tool end up darkening and I could come in here and attempt to tone those areas down also right here in my chin you see the dark spot in the middle of my chin dark means further ways that means there's an indebted mai chan as far as it's concerned so I could come in here and switch between dodge and burn just so you know, when you're switching between dodge and burn, you don't actually have to switch between those tools. If you're in one of the tools let's, say this one, which usually brightens if I simply hold down the option key, it automatically switches to the other temporarily, so therefore I could darken things here I have the option he held down let go of the option came back to brighten things, so option just gives you the opposite tool. Then I could save that image, and in order to get it to update this picture, I would need to come in and double click on the word displaced on each one of these to have it re apply the filter. It doesn't automatically update because it has no idea that file has changed on my hard drive, but in this case we won't apply it to my face so he wouldn't notice the difference. I just wanted to make sure you are aware that that would be possible, so that is displacement maps, any other questions or comments about displacement maps? Check the questions tab here really quick if you have several, this is collins from colorado. If you have several layers with same layer mask but different blending modes and find that you have to edit the mask, can you easily correct all the masks? Or do you have to edit each one of them that zoo? Nice question to segway and it's something I wish it would have covered earlier when we talked about layer masks, we just had him attached to one layer and you should realize that if you have a mask here let's, view this one by option clicking on it. Let's say I found an issue with it. Do you see here? Where was a gap? I think where I might have needed to mask across there. Let's, just say that was the case and a modified it well affecting just this mask won't update the others. The other ones that are in here, right? But here's, the change that I'm making, I'll stop feeling this match by option clicking let's. Look at how we could get that change to appear in the other mascots. Well, well, this is the mask I've changed. I could click within it and then drag tio here to strike right on top of that mask. If you drag, it'll say, hey, do you want to replace that mask and if I say yes now that mask will be updated. The problem is it removed it from down here. So what? I was doing it as I wasn't copying it up there I was moving it choose undo if I would like to move a copy, you hold on the option key ultimate nous now on a drag up it means leave it on this layer move a copy of it up to here ensure replaced that then I could hold on the option key and also drag it up here and so now I've replaced all of them so they should be identical again but I find that to be a little less than elegant because there's a different solution we could use that would be much better. I'm gonna select these three layers and I'm gonna type command g control gm windows that means put it into a group you know where those folders group then I'm gonna drag anyone of the masks on top of the group and I'll drag the other masks to the trash. So now in this group which is looks like a folder we have three layers in this mask that has attached to that group is controlling where all three of the layers show up so therefore there's no need to have a layer on each one of the mask on each one. This mask is controlling all of the layers through inside that group and so that I think, would be the most elegant way to accomplish what they were thinking of perfect. All right, next question is from carr, carl carol photo can he will go over why you needed the glossy and blurred grayscale image because they lost that part. So sure when I duplicated this image and I converted to black and white shall do again here, she's hominy friendship gives you so many warnings and so many things, and most of them don't matter that no wonder why it's intimidating for everybody. Ok, if you look at my skin here, I just talked about the skin because the shirt's a little simpler, although there's a bunch of the shirt to if it's going to bend the image based on brightness in dark things that are thought of as being far away, bright things they're thought of as being near that means the pores of my skin are thought of as being drill holes. They're far away because they're darker and in my shirt, any little highlights like you see this almost like a line right here of just slightly brighter stuff that is going to think of that as being closer to you and it's going to try to bend it around that, so let me say this in it, it will actually use it, so this is the version on I wanted to so I wanted a photo shop I was amused to use and photo shopped for this all right? So we have this version that has not been blurred let's use it in rn resolved and see what it looks like when we do click on the wrong spot there go all I'm going to do is double click on the word displace a click ok and I will ask me for that file and I'll feed it the other one the one called no no not me I'm going to need to do that for each one of these because I have three of them double clicking okay no, no not mean the bottom one double click on displace okay no, no, not me. So now we're going to see the result I'll choose undo a few times so you can see the original version and then this version okay here's the original version that used the blurred black and white version here's the non blurred do you see the difference? One looks clean the other one doesn't because the one that has noise and grain in the weave of fabric all that stuff wherever it's got the little bitty dark specks in it is think is it should push the image away from you where it's got little bitty bright specs is pushing it towards you and it's in such small little bitty areas that is doing it to tiny little spots here, and it doesn't create a smooth transition. I want really smooth sweeping detail in the image, not tiny little specs, and when you blur the image, it smoothes all that stuff out, so any little bitty bright speck on the images averaged into the surrounding, and so it's just thought I was an overall like a smooth hill instead of one that's got a lot of drill holes in it, and so that's the difference right there and that's, why we blurred it until you couldn't see the fine detail, the weave of fabric pours on skin, that kind of stuff to prevent it from having that little kind of thing where it doesn't look smooth so that hopefully answer their question, and I think it sure didn't go. This flag originally looked like this, and the bending that's on the flag is from a displacement map thie image that I used to bend it looked like this dark things are far away from you light things are near you and fifty percent gray means no movement. So I started off with a fifty percent gray document and I just painted with white painted with black, and then do you see these two fifty percent gray circles, one here in one there that's, where the flag is supposed to be held on to the pole meaning fifty percent gray means don't move in this area so I said don't move here and here so where if it was darker and moved to faraway lighter moved it closer darker moved it farther away and so on but the one additional technique that is here that we did not use in the other image I was in the other image we had a shirt that already had shadows and highlights in it and so when we end up applying the displacement map the shadows and highlights we still had from that shirt but if you look at this image and you look at the original there are no shadows there are no highlights so if you just apply a displacement map it will bend the flag but it's not going to make it look like it has a highlight right here in a shadow right there so the additional technique that was used here was there is a filter in photo shop that is called lighting effects called lighting effects lighting effects can add shadows and highlights to your picture and with lighting effects we show you what we could do and before I get into let me see if I can uh show you something here I actually got fancy with it see that so I ended up making that completely and funder shop just to play around and in the end that's what I was looking to make its just to experiment but you see how it's flapping if you look at the wave that's kind of pushed towards you is just moving towards the end of the flag is it's doing it? Isn't it so if you want to see how some of that was done I don't want to get the whole thing is we're not talking about animation and things like that here but all I did was these are the images that were used to bend the flag so those are the images that were used to bend the flag you see it just everything is moving to the right the only thing it's not moving to the right is the two gray dots on the left side because that's where supposed be held to the poll and so I just did multiple pictures in order to be able to have multiple versions and I changed out which version was visible to create the animation but what I just want to show you is I'll take one of those and I'm going to say that is a separate document I'll just select all copy put it in a brand new document can save it close that all right so then if it wanted to bend this and add the shiny stuff what I could end up doing is coming in here filter distort displace I can feed it that image I mean I did the exact same thing we did in the previous image the only additional step is that would also want to save the exact same grayscale picture in the channels panel. You could open it, copy it quite a brand new channel and pasted in. Then if you go in here to render lighting effects when you get in the lighting effects, you can add lights to your image, and I'm not that great at the newest lighting effects that have to play with it to be good at this. So let's look for presets, okay, there's, our little light source and somewhere within this is a choice where you can feed it that channel, and it will take me a moment finding that I'm not used to the new version because they redesigned this somewhere in here. There's a choice where you can tell it to, um, use that gray scale picture in the old version. It was right down here near the bottom, and if you did, it would know that this would be three dimensional. It would add shadows and highlights. I'm not going to go find it here in just the few minutes at least. It's not going to be worth me to spend the time, but in doing so that's, how I has end up to get that that reflection.

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Kim Doucette
 

Always love Ben. So clear and deep at the same time. I like buying his courses and love the added notes file. Shout out to his lovely wife for the awesome job she does!

a Creativelive Student
 

This is the my first purchased Creative Live course. Enjoyed the live broadcast and now practice a bit of the segments at my own pace. Ben Willmore is an outstanding instructor. Went off and purchased his Mastering Curves which is just as useful.

a Creativelive Student
 

Absolutely loved the class! Found out so many things that could either help me out when in PS or just add to my arsenal of editing. :) Thanks so much!!

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