In this Photoshop tutorial, I'm going to show
you how to use displacement maps to take logos, text and conform it to any shape and any object in
a very realistic way. Now we're going to wrap this logo to the shirt and there's a few techniques
I'm going to show you. But first of all, I want to show you the basics of a displacement
map so you understand how it works works. And I've got a really quick and easy way to do it.
So we've got our text on its own layer here. So the first thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to right click on it and I'm going to convert it to a smart object. The
reason I'm doing it is now we'll be able to warp it because you can't warp text. So you
need to go to rusty it or put it in a smart object. We're going to hide the text and
then we're going to go to our flag here. Now we're going to go to the channels and you'll
notice these red, green and blue channels. So we're looking for the channel that shows the
most contrast. And I'm going to go to the green channel. So here's a really, really quick way to
take a channel and put it into its own document. So we're going to right click on the name of the
channel and we are going to duplicate the channel. Now if I was to click OK, it
would add it to our channels. But we want a brand new document. So we're going
to change the document to new and then click okay. Now we have a brand new document and it's
a mono channel. So if we look at it under image mode, you'll see it's a multichannel. And this
is what you need to make a displacement map. Now there's a couple of things we need to
do to make this displacement map work. If we look close, see these little bits of
texture and grain and stuff? You don't want that showing. So what you want
to do is add a little bit of a blur. So we're going to choose filter blur and
we're going to grab the Gaussian blur. Now with the Gaussian blur, give it a low
amount. We just want to get rid of some of that micro detail. We obviously still want to
keep the detail, but if we get the micro detail, it'll look kind of grainy and weird and that's
why we blur it a little bit. Okay, great. Now I'm going to increase the contrast. I'm going to hit CTRL or command M for curves.
And then I'm just going to bring these in just a little bit. I just want to punch up this
contrast. Now I want to make sure I'm working with light and not pigment. And we're just
going to add a little contrast to the shadows. Punch up the highlights. Click. OK. Great.
Now we're going to save this out as a map. So we're going to choose File save as. And
I'm just going to drop this onto the desktop. And I'll just call this
underscore underscore Map and click Save. I can actually close this
document. I don't need it anymore. Let's go to our original document.
Click back on our GB so we can see all the colors. Let's go to the layer,
turn on our text. And now we're going to select our text. So we want this
to follow the contours of the flag. So we're going to choose filter distort. And then
we're going to go to Displace at the very top now, which is good with the default settings,
which is 1010. And we're going to click OK. And then we're going to see a dialog box. It's
going to open, asking us to select the map. Well, here's the map that we created. And when
it click open and now it's just going to apply it here. Now if I change the blend mode of this
to something like a soft light, you can see if we zoom in here, see how it starts to follow
the contours of that flag and catches those folds. Now let me just undo this for a second.
I'm just going to hit undo a couple of times. And I'm going to show you. I'm going to
choose Displaced once again. This time I'm going to increase it to 50 just so you
can see what happens with a higher amount. When we get to a higher amount,
we're going to get more displacement, but we're also going to get more kind of
noise. So let me show you what happens. Click okay, choose the map. Click here and see
what happens there. Let's just change the blend mode so it looks a little bit better overlay
mode. See, we're getting a much better wrap, but see how it gets jaggy around the edges. So you
got to kind of watch that when you go too high. So experiment with the settings, find the right
setting. All right, let's go ahead now and map this logo to this shirt. I've got the Photoshop
Cafe logo on its own layer. So let's zoom in. And so the first thing I want to do is I want to
just kind of rotate it and get it in position. So I'm going to hit CTRL T, that's
command t for free transform. And I'm just going to tilt that a little bit
because I'm noticing it should be tilting. And then I'm also going to kind of just kind
of squish this a little bit. So let's right click and we're going to choose Warp. And with the
warp, I'm just going to pull this up a little bit. What I'm trying to do is just kind of conform
to the shape of her shirt a little bit more. All right, I don't have to make that perfect, but
I just want to kind of make it fit the contour, it's going to give us a better result. But notice
it's not following any of the texture or anything like that. That's what our displacement maps
going to do. So let's go ahead, hide that layer. Choose a background, go to the channels. We're looking for the channel
with the most contrast. And I'm looking for the contrast in the shirt here. And I would say either the green or the blue
channels giving us more contrast. Let's zoom in a little bit. Let's go up to blue channel. So
we're going to right click, duplicate the channel and remember we did it. And we're
going to choose a new document. Click and we'll name it just so we know what
it is. Click. OK. Alright. So there it is. Let's do our blur blur. This one here, I'm going
to give it a lower amount, probably about one, just because I want to keep some of
the texture here inside the shirt. And then I'm just going to hit
CTRL L. Let's use levels this time. And what we want to do is just pull that
up till it hits to the bottom there. Maybe go in a little bit. So we're boosting that
contrast a little bit and then it's moved to mid tone. There we go. So I'm trying to pull out
the texture a little bit there in the mid tones. That looks pretty good. Don't worry about what the
image looks like. We just want this texture to really show through.
Perfect. Let's save it. File save as. And we're just going to drop it on a
desktop. Great. So we can close that other document. We don't need it.
So we're back in RGB mode layers. Let's select our logo. Now this could be type,
it could be another image. It could be anything you want. And we're going to choose filter
distort, displace. Let's go to the default ten, because this one here, we don't really
need to do big bends or anything on it, but we just want to kind of get the texture going. And click. OK. There's our map shirt. Click. OK. All right. Almost there. Now you can see it
starting to kind of work. We need to change the blend mode to make this look good. So
we're going to choose a multiply blend mode. Choose either multiply or something like
a linear burn or something that's going to get in there and shows the
detail. Let's zoom in and see the texture. Look at that. See how it's just
kind of wrapping and it looks like it's actually on the shirt. Now if we went for linear burn,
we could also get a pretty nice result there. And so when we look at this nice and close, notice
how it's following the texture of that shirt. So as you can see, displacement maps are a great
way of just getting into those textures and just really following the contours of an object. Let
me know in the comments underneath if you learned anything new. And if you are new to this channel,
hit the subscribe button. Turn on notifications. You won't miss any of my videos. Smash that like button into dust. And
until next time, I'll see you at the cafe.
