From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

718 Contour mapping for cash in Photoshop

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

718 Contour mapping for cash in Photoshop

- [Instructor] Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. This week, we're gonna take another look at that contour mapping that we had so much fun with over the past couple of weeks. Only this time we're gonna start with this guy right here, we're gonna add these contour lines, and we're gonna turn this guy into a quick and dirty facsimile of American cash. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. Alright, here's a final faux cash effect, just so you have a chance to see it on screen. We're gonna start off inside this photograph, which comes to us from the Dreamstime image library, about which you can learn more and get some great deals at dreamstime.com/deke.php. Alright, and I'm gonna press the Backspace key, or the Delete key on the Mac, to get rid of that URL layer. And then, with the Background selected here inside the Layers panel, I'll make sure that my Rectangular Marquee tool is selected up here at the top of the Toolbox, and I'll Right Click anywhere inside the image window and choose Duplicate Layer. And then I'm gonna change the Document to New and click OK in order to duplicate that layer into a new document so that I don't in any way, shape, or form, harm the original. Alright now, the first thing we need to do is create a displacement map. And just to ensure that we have nice, smooth transitions, I'll go up to the Filter menu, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur. And a Radius value of 20 pixels should work nicely for just about any moderate to high resolution image out there. And then I'll click OK to accept that effect. Now, notice that I'm applying Gaussian Blur as a static filter, and that's because displacement maps have to be flat. And to confirm that this one is, even though it looks like it is, we can see this Background item here inside the Layers panel and nothing more. But notice up here in the Layer menu that for some reason, the Flatten Image command is available to me. If it's available to you as well, you need to choose that command to make sure the image is absolutely flat. If you go to the Layer menu and the Flatten Image command is dimmed, as it is for me now, then you don't have to worry. Alright now, as you may recall, if you were watching previous episodes of this series, displacement maps warp an image one direction, that is down in terms of vertical distortions, where the image is dark, and the opposite direction where the image is light. Just to make things more predictable, we ought to go ahead and modify the luminous levels inside the various color channels. And to see what those channels look like, go up to the Window menu and choose the Channels command. And then notice that we have the standard Red channel, Green, and Blue. They're all very blurry because we just applied Gaussian Blur, but they have a full range of luminance levels. We wanna cut that range in half by returning to the RGB image and then go up to the Image menu, choose Adjustments, followed by Levels, or you can press Control + L or Command + L on the Mac, to bring up the Levels dialog box. Alright, I'm gonna move this guy over a little bit. And I'm gonna change the channel to Red. And notice that we're missing some highlights right here on the far right side of the histogram. And so, I'll go ahead and move that white point slider to a value of 240 just to make sure we have some nice bright highlights. And then I'll select this first Output Levels value and take it up to 128. And you can see, if I move this to a better location, that we're affecting the Red channel independently of the others. And that's going to allow us to turn any one of these channels into a displacement map. And so now I'll switch to Green. And notice it's missing highlights too, so I'll just go ahead and drag this white point slider down to 235, looks pretty good. In other words, I want it to appear at the right end of the histogram. And then I'll take that first Output Levels value up to 128. And notice that's affecting the Green channel independently of the others. And now I'll switch to the Blue channel. And I'm not gonna modify its white point value because we do have a few highlights. Even though they're pretty sparse, they are there. And so I'll just take the first Output Levels value up to 128. And notice now I'm affecting the Blue channel. At which point, I'll click OK to accept that change. Alright, now we wanna save out each one of these channels. And so I'll go ahead and click on the Red channel to select it here inside the Channels panel. And I'll go up to the Image menu, choose Mode, and choose Grayscale. And notice that Photoshop is telling me that it's gonna discard the other two channels. So, it's gonna get rid of Green and Blue. At which point, I'll say OK. And then I'll go up to the File menu and choose the Save As command. Or, given that this file's never been saved, I could just choose the standard Save command. And notice this guy right there, GBlur 20. So, Gaussian Blur 20. Luminance levels 128 through 255, and then 1R. And I'm putting a one in front of the R, which stands for Red, just to make sure that these guys including 2G and 3B are in the proper order. Because otherwise, if they were ordered alphabetically without the numbers, B would come before G which would come before R. In any event, I wanna replace this guy, so I'll click Save. And I'll click the Yes button in order to replace that image. And now I'll press Control + Alt + Z, or Command + Option + Z on the Mac to bring back all my channels. I'll click on the Green channel, I'll go up to the Image menu, choose Mode, and choose Grayscale. Click OK in response to the alert message. Then, this time I need to go to the File menu, and definitely choose Save As. And I'll just go ahead and change the 1R to 2G like so for Green. Click the Save button, click Yes, and so forth. So, you just need to save each one of the channels as an independent image. And by the way, I need to make this clear; I'll go ahead and press Control + Alt + Z, or Command + Option + Z on the Mac, in order to bring back my channels. I'll click on Blue, go up to the Image menu, choose Mode, followed by Grayscale, click OK. Go up to the File menu, choose the Save As command. And this time I'll replace 2G with 3B. Here's the important part, the step I left out. You need to save your image to the Photoshop format, that is the native PSD format. And that's just one of those things. Photoshop requires displacement maps to be absolutely flat PSD files. At which point, I'll click Save and save over the existing image. Alright, now let's go ahead and switch over to that Dreamstime photograph. I'll also switch back to the Layers panel here. And with the Background selected, I'll go up to the Layer menu, choose New Fill Layer, and choose Pattern. And I'll go ahead and call this guy cash, let's say. And I'll click OK. And then I'll select that pattern that I created a couple of weeks ago. And if you wanna see how I put it together; it's very simple, by the way, it's just 16 pixels of black followed by four pixels of white vertically, that is to say; but I do show you how to create this pattern, if you're curious, in Deke's Techniques 713. Alright, now I'll go ahead and click OK in order to create that pattern layer. Alright, now just so that we're not seeing these black and white lines, I'll go ahead and change the blend mode in the top left corner of the Layers panel from Normal to Soft Light, is gonna work nicely. And that's gonna integrate the lines into the image. Alright, now we wanna turn these horizontal lines into contour lines by applying a displacement map. And you do that by going to the Filter menu, choosing Distort, followed by Displace. At which point, Photoshop is gonna say, "Hey, I can't apply a filter to a pattern layer. You've gotta either rasterize it." Bad idea. "Or convert it to a smart object." Great idea. So, go ahead and do that, that way you can apply Displace as a dynamic smart filter. Set the Horizontal Scale to zero. Now, as I was saying in previous weeks, it really doesn't matter when you're displacing horizontal lines what you set the Horizontal Scale value to. But since we don't want any distortion, it's better to get in the habit of setting this value to zero. Then set the Vertical Scale value to anything you want. This next option right here, Displacement Map, is set to Stretch to Fit by default, but it doesn't matter in our case because the pattern layer and the overall image are the same size. But you wanna set Undefined Areas to Wrap Around, otherwise you're gonna have some gaps at the bottom. And then, notice that I've set Vertical Scale to 50. I'll go ahead and click OK. And now you just wanna select the desired channel. And so, I could start off with 1R, which is the Red channel, and then click Open. And I'd end up with this displacement right here. If you're looking for something different, all you have to do is Double Click on Displace once again to bring up the Displace dialog box. You can just click OK in response to that and then select a different channel such as 3B, which is the Blue channel. At which point, I'll click Open and we end up with a slightly different effect. So, notice this is the Red channel, this is the Blue channel. Basically, I like the distortion in this guy's lower lip better where the Blue channel is concerned. So once again, this is Red. Notice that the lines don't wrap around nearly as nicely. And we end up with this little bit of weirdness down here at the bottom of the lip, compared with the Blue channel which looks great. Alright now, we don't need this filter mask, it's just cluttering up the panel, so I'm gonna Right Click on that white thumbnail and choose Delete Filter Mask. And then I'll press Shift + F to switch to the fullscreen mode. I'll go ahead and press Control + 0, or Command + 0 on the Mac, to fit the image on screen. And that's how you create a kind of quick and dirty simulation of the engraved lines associated at least with American money, by combining a horizontal line pattern along with a displacement map here inside Photoshop. Alright now, if you're a member of lynda.com/linkedinlearning, I have a followup movie in which I'm gonna show you how to take our effect so far and we're going to infuse it with the color of money. If you're looking forward to next week, I'll show you how to take adjustment layers, which are a cornerstone of Photoshop, and we're going to simulate them inside Adobe Illustrator. Deke's Techniques, each and every week. Keep watching.

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