williams | silverpeakarts.ca

You can use a displacement map to make a graphic follow every contour or corner of an underlying texture or shape, such as a flag or cloth.

Note: This tutorial uses CS3 menus and assumes you possess some working knowledge of photoshop including using channels and layers.

You can follow along with your own images or use the texture and logo I supply here.

Download Assets (2.3MB)

Adobe Photoshop CS4 – Full Adobe Photoshop CS4

STEP 1: YOUR TEXTURE
Open the file silverpeak.psd, turn off the LOGO layer, select the CLOTH layer and ensure you are in RGB mode. Click on the CHANNELS palette. Choose the channel with the most contrast and click on it. I chose the RED channel.

You now need to “duplicate channel” in order to create a new document, which will be your “displacement map”. In your channels palette, with the RED channel selected, go to the drop-down menu and click “duplicate channel”.

Under “Destination / Document”, choose NEW. Click the OK button.

You now have a new document. You can choose at this time to increase the contrast with your curves (see image) and apply a slight Gaussian Blur to it in order to smooth things out. How much Gaussian blur you use will depend on your image resolution and the amount of texture in it. The higher the resolution the more blur you need to have any effect. Please be sparing, for this tutorial use a 1.0 pixel blur.

optional curves settings to increase contrast

Save your document as displacementmap.psd and close it.

STEP 2: YOUR LOGO
Now, return to the original silverpeak.psd document, turn on the logo layer and click on the RGB Channel at the top of the palette to ensure all channels are selected.

ALTERNATE CONTENT: TEXT
If you want to use text on your displacement map you need to rasterize it. To do this go to the menu LAYER / RASTERIZE or right click on your type later and choose “rasterize layer” from the menu.

STEP 3: DISTORT
With your logo layer selected, go to the following menu FILTER / DISTORT / DISPLACE. Use the settings as you see in the image below. Click OK.

You will now have to find your file displacementmap.psd. Navigate to it and click OPEN.

Your artwork is now distorted to fit the underlying texture and folds.

If you don’t like the effect, click UNDO and you can play with the vertical and horizontal settings to suit your creative… I have used Horizontal and Vertical Scale up to 10.

STEP 4: BLEND
You can now use different layer styles and blending modes to further refine your image.

You can choose OVERLAY, or indeed experiment with them all, to see the colour come through a bit more. If your texture is very rough you can also add shadow layer effects to your logo too add more depth. Experiment.

Logo with OVERLAY at 100% opacity selected.

However, I like to use masks to keep the white of the logo and further blend it with the folds.

Turn off your LOGO layer so that you only see the background. go to CHANNELS mode and again select the RED channel. COMMAND – CLICK that channel to create a selection.

Click on the RGB Channel at the top of the palette to activate all channels again and return to the LAYERS view. Turn on your LOGO layer and click on the “Add Layer Mask” button at the bottom of the palette.

Your layer should now look like this in NORMAL blend mode.

Select the layer and go to the drop-down menu and DUPLICATE LAYER, call the duplicate “screen layer” and choose SCREEN, 100% for the blend.

Select the original LOGO layer and set it’s blending to SOFT LIGHT at 50% opacity. Then, duplicate the LOGO layer, calling the new layer “lighter layer” and selecting it change the blend mode to LIGHTER COLOUR at 100% opacity.

You can experiment further by changing the contrast or opacity of any of the layer masks, adding more blended layers or other effects. It’s up to you.

Your final image for this tutorial should look like this now… and this is where we’re done!

david

May 20th, 2008 | Tags: adobe, channels, displacement map, fit logo to flag, how to, photoshop, RGB, tutorial, wavy, wrap texture | Category: graphic artist's resource, photoshop, tutorials | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL