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Tutorials
Distorting images with displacement maps. Part 2
Oct 18th 2005
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Using Displacement Maps to Distort an Image: Part 2
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1.
Hey, thanks for coming back. These
displacement map things are way cool, but it
takes a ton of practice to be able to predict
the outcome.
The Story So Far...
If you're new here, basically Displace is one of the Distort Filters. Once you have an image you'd like to alter, you choose Filter: Distort: Displace. You make some choices in the Displace dialog box, then choose another image that will be used as a map of its values to distort the first.
I wanted to get away from the photographic images for a bit and show you a hint of what cool graphics alterations you could make, so I created the simple monochromatic blue circle design you see at top left. The last displacement map image I used was the shrunken blurred diamond grid. You can see what the effect is on the bullseye design here at left. Pretty neat. I personally like the results a lot and it only took a few seconds of work time. If you don't like what you see, it's back to the drawing board. You can try another displacement map, or goof around with the settings in the Displace dialog box.
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2.
Our old friend the Displace dialog box has a lot of options to consider. The Horizontal and Vertical Scale boxes basically control the amount of distortion or displacement you'll see. (For most of my stuff here, I'll be using small percentages, such as 20. I suggest you try out the same thing when learning. Otherwise the distortion might be so great, you won't be able to decipher what happened.) I touched on the option buttons under Displacement Map: last time, and I'll get back to it later.
The new thing I'm going to show you here if the effect of checking either button under Undefined Areas:. I started out by applying this image I created
as a displacement map on the circle design, while having the Repeat Edge Pixels option checked. You can see the result to the left. Pay particular attention to the lower right area in the blue design. Edge pixels were repeated as it seems most of the image is squeezed up and to the left.
After undoing that, I went back and did the same thing - with one difference- I checked the Wrap Around button this time. Now the distortion that happens at the top and the left edges wraps around and pops into the bottom and the right edges.
This has one cool advantage. You've got a ready-made pattern which will tile perfectly. All you've got to do is Select: All, then Edit: Define Pattern, then Edit: Fill once you've got a place you'd like to fill with the tiling pattern. It might look something like this:
You could also use the tile as a background image on a web page. |
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3.
Now let's try out another home-made
displacement map. I made the following by
creating a shape with the pen tool, then
duplicating and scaling it to fill a
rectangle.
I apply the image to the blue circle design at 20% with the Stretch To Fit and Wrap Around options selected. This had such an excellent effect that I got all excited and applied the same distortion to that zebra image I abused in the last tutorial. You can see both over there. Just for fun, I used the displaced blue design as a tiled pattern below:
With some practice, you could become an html background image factory! |
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4.
Time to stop going through all the effort
of making my own displacement maps and avail
myself of some that Adobe has obligingly
provided. Look for the Dispmaps folder in Windows or the Displacement Maps folder in Mac OS. Mine was in my Plug Ins folder, for some reason, where my copy of Photoshop resides on my hard drive. You'll see lots of color images there and can try them out. I applied this one
to my weary blue bullseye and got the result to the left. The Displacement Map: setting was set to Stretch To Fit and that's what it did. This displacement map was very small in relation to my blue design so I thought it's time to try out the alternate setting, Tile.I've circled the area in question in the image at left. More use of the airbrush and stamp tool makes short work of that.
This distortion is quite different as you can see. I once again applied the same distortion to a photographic image so you can see the results there.
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5.
One
more Displacement to go. I took this image of all
these well dressed happy people and messed them
up a bit. For the displacement map, I used one of
Photoshop's free textures. (These are located in
a folder aptly named Textures in your Goodies Folder inside your Adobe Photoshop folder on your hard drive.) This one's called Bumpy Leather and below I show you the texture and a close-up of a portion:
 
Notice the effect it has on our business people. |
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6.
For
a big slam bang finish I used the History Brush
 to bring back the guy in the foreground to his normal, boring self. The result could make a nice editorial illustration accompanying an article on "how to stand out from the crowd in your office" (or some similar cliche) and it only took a few minutes work.
Well, all good things must end, and I hope your all motivated now to go out and do some educated experiments using displacement maps to distort your favorite image.
Happy Image Editing! |
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Latest Forums Clone YourselfThat is quit nice. But I think that can be more easy to do.. |
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