Peachpit TV: Using the Displacement Filter in Photoshop Video

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Peachpit TV: Using the Displacement Filter in Photoshop

[Music Playing] Authors tip Podcast Using the Displacement Filter Let us do something else that is in the book. Let us keep it in the book. I mentioned this a second ago that I displaced the tablecloth. I displaced the tablecloth — this filter right here. How many people use that filter? This filter is something that people have been asking for, for a long time and it has been there since Version 1.7 except that nobody knows what it does. Look at it. Oh yeah! I know what that does. And the worst part about – I remember when I first saw this filter, it is like “I do not know what this does”, “okay, let us click okay”, another window! Now what will you do? Well, I found out what it does. And what it does is it uses the luminosity values of one image to bend the pixels of another image. Where you have a neutral density of 50% gray, it has no effect. But anything that is lighter, then at 50% gray is going to move pixels up and to the left. Anything that is darker than at 50% gray is going to move pixels down, and to the right. So with that little bit of knowledge, I am going to create an image here that is only from scratch. I am going to create a raising flag that is blowing in the wind okay? The flag is a checkered flag so it requires a pattern. So I am going to go in here and turn on my grid again. Show that grid. And I am going to select the little box right there, right there oops! Just a box, I want one box, there you go. I am going to fill it with black. I am going to duplicate it down there and then I will select both black boxes and the two white boxes, and turn that into a pattern. Throw them away now. Okay so in my background here, I will get some colors, I will get a nice blue like this. And just to save time, I am going to just use that blue. Create another layer and then I am going to select this big shape like this, and fill that with that pattern I just created. There it is. I do not need the grid anymore so we can turn it off. Now, it takes the luminosity values of one image to bend the pixels of this one. I do not have another image. I am going to create the displacement map. The displacement map is what this filter uses to bend the pixels. So when another layer on top of this, I am going to fill that with the 50% gray. That is an unusual density. It has no effect remember? So I am going to bring down the opacity a little bit so I can see the flag underneath it and then with blacks and whites, I am going to start to create where this thing is going to bend. So I am going to create a big black strip right through here like that and maybe another one right there, and one right through here, and maybe a little one right there. And then with white, I will throw a little white through here and a little white right in there like that, maybe a little white here. So it brings the opacity back up. That kind of hard edge so I am going to go in there and soften them up by blurring them. The softer the transition, the softer the defaults are going to be. So I would like to soften them up like that. Now it needs to be in a separate image. So I am going to select all, copy, new, paste, close it, save it and I am going to call it “my map”. Now I am going to put it on my desktop. Okay, there it is. Come back over here to my flag let us turn that thing off. There is my flag. So I come over here to that filter, distort, displace, and the default in this case is ten and ten. You can play around with that. I am going play around a little bit by just increasing the horizontal to 12, leave the vertical at 10. These things down here, I have never concerned myself with. Look at what they say, this is the displacement map. The other image, you want to stretch it to fit or tight it. You want the undefined areas are wrapped around and so on. The reason I never concerned myself with those because I like to control of exactly where things are going to bend in my displacement map, so always the exact same dimensions as the image I am displacing as they are in this case. I did in an actual layer in this flower. So I click Okay and now it will ask me for the displacement map which is right here on my desktop, the map, open and there is the little bends. Now that I have added this bends, I have added that illusion of the third dimension. I need the shading that will fill finish that effect. This guy created the effects so we know it is in position. So I am going to clip it with the flag, change its mode to something like hard light, reduce the opacity a little bit, merge it down, take the flag and do a little normal distort on it, and there is my little flag waving in the wind. We do have warping in there but warp is not going to give you that kind of an effect. Warp has a very specific grid that you work within with whereas here, I have bends going in all kinds of different directions so you need more control which is where that displacement map comes in. And that filter won an academy award. It won an academy award for the movie Vis-à-vis. The effects supervisor for Vis-à-vis was a guy named John Knowles who is one of the two Knowles brother who originally wrote Photoshop so he knew what he was doing.

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[Music Playing]

Authors tip Podcast

Using the Displacement Filter

Let us do something else that is in the book. Let us keep it in the book. I mentioned this a second ago that I displaced the tablecloth. I displaced the tablecloth — this filter right here. How many people use that filter? This filter is something that people have been asking for, for a long time and it has been there since Version 1.7 except that nobody knows what it does. Look at it. Oh yeah! I know what that does. And the worst part about – I remember when I first saw this filter, it is like “I do not know what this does”, “okay, let us click okay”, another window! Now what will you do? Well, I found out what it does. And what it does is it uses the luminosity values of one image to bend the pixels of another image. Where you have a neutral density of 50% gray, it has no effect. But anything that is lighter, then at 50% gray is going to move pixels up and to the left. Anything that is darker than at 50% gray is going to move pixels down, and to the right.

So with that little bit of knowledge, I am going to create an image here that is only from scratch. I am going to create a raising flag that is blowing in the wind okay? The flag is a checkered flag so it requires a pattern. So I am going to go in here and turn on my grid again. Show that grid. And I am going to select the little box right there, right there oops! Just a box, I want one box, there you go. I am going to fill it with black. I am going to duplicate it down there and then I will select both black boxes and the two white boxes, and turn that into a pattern. Throw them away now. Okay so in my background here, I will get some colors, I will get a nice blue like this. And just to save time, I am going to just use that blue. Create another layer and then I am going to select this big shape like this, and fill that with that pattern I just created. There it is. I do not need the grid anymore so we can turn it off. Now, it takes the luminosity values of one image to bend the pixels of this one. I do not have another image. I am going to create the displacement map. The displacement map is what this filter uses to bend the pixels. So when another layer on top of this, I am going to fill that with the 50% gray. That is an unusual density. It has no effect remember?

So I am going to bring down the opacity a little bit so I can see the flag underneath it and then with blacks and whites, I am going to start to create where this thing is going to bend. So I am going to create a big black strip right through here like that and maybe another one right there, and one right through here, and maybe a little one right there. And then with white, I will throw a little white through here and a little white right in there like that, maybe a little white here. So it brings the opacity back up. That kind of hard edge so I am going to go in there and soften them up by blurring them. The softer the transition, the softer the defaults are going to be. So I would like to soften them up like that.

Now it needs to be in a separate image. So I am going to select all, copy, new, paste, close it, save it and I am going to call it “my map”. Now I am going to put it on my desktop. Okay, there it is. Come back over here to my flag let us turn that thing off. There is my flag. So I come over here to that filter, distort, displace, and the default in this case is ten and ten. You can play around with that. I am going play around a little bit by just increasing the horizontal to 12, leave the vertical at 10. These things down here, I have never concerned myself with. Look at what they say, this is the displacement map. The other image, you want to stretch it to fit or tight it. You want the undefined areas are wrapped around and so on. The reason I never concerned myself with those because I like to control of exactly where things are going to bend in my displacement map, so always the exact same dimensions as the image I am displacing as they are in this case. I did in an actual layer in this flower. So I click Okay and now it will ask me for the displacement map which is right here on my desktop, the map, open and there is the little bends.

Now that I have added this bends, I have added that illusion of the third dimension. I need the shading that will fill finish that effect. This guy created the effects so we know it is in position. So I am going to clip it with the flag, change its mode to something like hard light, reduce the opacity a little bit, merge it down, take the flag and do a little normal distort on it, and there is my little flag waving in the wind. We do have warping in there but warp is not going to give you that kind of an effect. Warp has a very specific grid that you work within with whereas here, I have bends going in all kinds of different directions so you need more control which is where that displacement map comes in.

And that filter won an academy award. It won an academy award for the movie Vis-à-vis. The effects supervisor for Vis-à-vis was a guy named John Knowles who is one of the two Knowles brother who originally wrote Photoshop so he knew what he was doing.

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services