map displacement images

[marex0058]

Just got Elements Techniques Vol 3 No 6. On the back page - by Wendy - was a neat idea to make a groovy car design:
http://http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/subscriber/tutorials/tw_displacement.php

All the images on that page, A-F, are called Map something. There is no reference in the instructions to Maps A to F.

You start with two images - Car in front of the garage and the Flag. You select the car and put it on a layer then you paste the flag onto the car and displace (distort) the flag to fit the shape of the car. Clean up the extraneous parts of the flag AND voila! you have a car with a flag on it.

Here is/are the mystery:
In step 2 it says to "Next duplicate the image and call the duplicate "Map".
Which image?


I get confused by "Car" images and "Car" files and who does what to whom.
If you can help resolve my confusion I surely would like to try this neat technique.

BTW I love the little comment in step 7: "Lower the opacity of the flag layer and move it around until it looks." Sorry, but how can you tell if a flag looks?

Anyway Wendy, maybe you can sort out my confusion.

[Daviskw]

Hi there

I don't know Wendy’s tutorial but here is what you would need...

Say you have a color picture of a cliff wall... you want to overlay the wall with a flag.

You will need to duplicate the cliff layer.... desaturate it... make it black and white. Copy or cut it to the clipboard and paste it to its own file... then change the mode to grayscale and save as a PSD file. Remember its name and location

If you still have a desaturated layer hide it for now by turning off its eye.

Click on the background and insert the flag above.

Now press Filter>Distort> displace. set the settings to 10, 10, stretch to fit, and wrap around... click ok and in the box choose the file you just made then OK.

Photoshop uses the black and white of the file to displace pixels to make it look like the flag fits the cliff.

If you like you can turn the desaturated layer back on and change its blend mode th Multiply for contrast and adjust opacity.

I am giving you this from memory so I hope I have it right and it helps.

Butch

[Wendy]

Hi ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

The photographs in the tutorials are listed just as A, B, C, D etc so that the site knew which order to put them in the tutorial ... so they don't refer to anything other than that.

Photographs A&B show you the two images I started with then you get some instructions and the image below the instructions shows you how the image looks at that stage.

Steps one and two are

First select the car, copy it to its own layer

Duplicate the image

So you have select the car, copied it to its own layer and then you duplicate the image (by doing File>Duplicate)

BTW ... they missed off the word OK but I'm sure that you worked that out ..


Wendy

[kimi_boo]

my 2 cents... lower the opacity of the flag layer to see where you would like to position it. Then bring your opacity back to 100% once you are done.

[Wendy]

Hi Kimi ...

Yes thats what I suggested too ... it just makes it so much easier to see how the final image will look :) and it really does help lining it up.

With the examples I used I tried to match up the horizontal line of the flag and the car ... that adds to the realism ...


Wendy