How To Make A Real Flag With The Displace Filter & Displacement Maps In Photoshop

How To Make A Real Flag With The Displace Filter & Displacement Maps In Photoshop

Liquid pixels - wrapping pixels over undulate silk

The layer blend modes are an effective way of blending a pattern or graphic with a three-dimensional form. By using the blend modes, the flag can be modified to respect the color and tone of the undulating silk beneath it.

The highlights and shadows that give the silk its shape can however be further utilized to wrap the flag so that it obeys the material's shape and sense of volume. This could be achieving by using the Displace filter in conjunction with a displacement map'. The map' defines the contour to which the flag must fit in. The final effect can be as if to shrink-wrapping' the flag to the 3-D form of the undulating silk.

The brightness level of each pixel in the map instructs the filter to shift the parallel pixel of the selected layer in a horizontal or vertical plane. The standard on which this technique works is that of mountains and valleys'.

1. Take a photograph of silk dressing gown using the available light. To make this image to act as an effective displacement map the contrast must however be expanded. An effective way of expanding contrast in Photoshop Elements is to copy the layer and set the top layer to Overlay' blend mode. Do view the histogram in the Histogram palette.

2. Select the Image menu and from the Mode submenu select Grayscale'. Select the option Flatten' when the Warning dialog box appears. The displacement map has to be in Grayscale otherwise the color channels will trouble the appropriate displacement effect.

3. To further improve the effectiveness of the displacement map, blur the image slightly. This effect of blurring the map will smooth out the lines of the flag as it wraps around the outlines of the silk. Too much blur and the wrinkles will be lost, too little and the lines of the flag will appear jagged as it is upset by any minor differences in tone. Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur' and start by selecting a Radius of around 10 pixels. When working with images of a different resolution increase or decrease this radius.

4. Save the displacement map as a Photoshop (PSD) file. Shut the blurred Grayscale file. You will need to choose this file when the Displacement filter asks for the location of your map, so make a note of where it has been saved to on your system.

5. Open the RGB silk file that has not been blur as well as the flag image. With the flag image as the active window, select All' from the Select menu and then click Copy' from the File menu. Now make the silk image the active window and select Paste' from the File menu. Then again, you can just pull the thumbnail of the flag image in the Layers palette into the image window of the silk image if you can see both image windows on your desktop.

Fix the blend mode of the flag layer to Multiply'. Make use of the Free Transform command to expand the flag layer so that it is a little larger than the background layer.

6. Select Filter > Distort > Displace'. Enter the amount of displacement in the Horizontal and Vertical fields of the Displace dialog box, as the size of the displacement is dependent on the resolution of the image. Pick amounts of 40 for both fields for the Flag.jpg used in this project. Increasing the amount greater than 60 for either the Horizontal or Vertical scale will not only increase the amount of distortion in this project image, but will also start to break away the islands of color from the design of the flag indicating that the limit of the effect has been exceeded. Select the displacement map you created earlier to complete this step. Your flag should now amazingly fit in to the contours of the silk. If still you are not convinced with the results go to the Edit menu and choose 'Undo'. Repeat the process selecting smaller or greater amounts in the Displace dialog box.

To ensure no gaps must appear between the distorted graphic and the edge of the image window, the graphic or pattern image file you are displacing must be slightly larger than the image file you created the map for.

7. Adding an adjustment layer and dragging the Highlight slider to the start of the histogram will extend the dynamic range and make the highlights and midtones appear brighter. Your dramatic and colorful background is now accomplished.

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