Wave of the Past

About the Author Russell Brown is the Sr. Creative Director for Adobe Systems, Inc. These tutorials come from Russell Brown's "Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Tips and Techniques" CD. Visit www.russellbrown.com for more tips and special events!

Related Resources • Wave of the Future • Photoshop Tutorials

Adobe ‘s flag bearer of digital imaging, Russell Preston Brown, leads the way with the Displace filter and Adobe Photoshop 6.0.

INTERMEDIATE

You may have read my tip “Wave of the Future,” where I distorted text over the contours of a flag in Adobe® Photoshop® 6.0. Now I’ll create the “Wave of the Past.” I’m going to use a classic Displace filter to transform my text image over the contours of this billowing flag.

1. The first step in creating a displaced image is to make a displacement map. To do this, we will borrow from our channels. Select and make visible only the background layer. As you can see here, I have turned off my text layer to reveal the background image.

2. Show the Channels palette. Select the channel with the most contrast between the shadows, midtones, and highlights. We need to save this channel as its own file, so from the Channels popup menu, choose Duplicate Channel.

Displacement Map
A displacement map displaces the image based on its grayscale values. The black values distort the pixels in one direction, while the white values distort the pixels in the opposite direction. A value of 50% gray does nothing–it’s the neutral midpoint between the black and white values.

3. In the Duplicate Channel dialog box, select New Document for Destination. Name the file and click OK.

Destination
If you don’t choose New Document for your destination, the channel will be saved back into your existing image. Be sure to choose New Document.

4. As you can see, we now have a copy of our channel. There are two things we need to do before this image becomes a displacement map. The first is to run Levels. Choose Image > Adjust > Levels. Simply select Auto to increase the contrast and create a true black-and-white image.

Advanced Users!
The Displace filter differentiates between channels for horizonal and vertical displacement. If you use an RGB document with two different images in the Red and Green channels, then the displacement will be separated between them. If you supply only one channel, as we do in this project, then the horizontal and vertical movement will be based on the same displacement map.

5. Next, choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. The goal here is to soften the image so that there are no hard edges. After doing this, save your image and close it. Remember where you save the file, because you’ll need to access it later.

6. Now we’re ready to work on our image, so select and make visible the layer you would like to distort. I have chosen to distort some text on the flag.

Text Layers
A dialog box will prompt you to rasterize your text layer when you select the Displace filter, since the filter will not work on a true text layer.

Continued on Page 2 -->

Adobe, the Adobe logo, and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated, registered in the United States and/or other countries. Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. ©2000 Adobe Systems Incorporated. Licensed to About.com. All rights reserved. Photo Credit © PhotoDisc, Inc. PS6.0 12/00

Visit www.russellbrown.com for more tips and special events!

To submit your own content to this site, visit the article submission form.