Datasheet

22 chapter 1 Tools for Building Your Masterpiece
Keep in mind that all of these adjustments have in no way altered the original photo
layer. Simply by adding three adjustment layers, you have been able to enhance the color,
repaint an area of the image, and convert it to an artist’s rendering. Figure 1.51 shows the
Layers panel with all four layers in place.
As mentioned in the preceding section, “Working
with Layer Masks,” you can fade the effects of your
adjustments with gray shades, rendering the adjustment
semitransparent. Adjustment layers also have to heed
the rules of blending modes, so play around a bit and
have fun with them. Trust me; you have not seen the
last of them in this book!
Displacement Mapping
Have you ever looked at an image created by someone else who seems quite proud of it, but
it just doesn’t look right to you? You hate to say anything that could be taken as a brutal
kick to their ego, but you know deep inside that if they had just taken a few extra stepsa
tweak here, an adjustment therethey could have a piece that really boggles the eye. This
often occurs when people try to overlay an image on top of another. If the curves and con-
tours of the two images match, the artist is well on the way to creating art that doesn’t
appear “thrown together.
Displacement maps can help. These are designed to help you conform one image to the
shape of another, using the shades of gray in the image to create the distortions in the sec-
ond. Displacement maps play a part in several of the techniques found later in this book, so
a quick hands-on tutorial is in order for you to get up to speed.
Need Direction? Use a Map
Open the images Back.jpg and Map.jpg (see Figure 1.52).
The foundation image for this technique is the photo of a man’s back. The thought
here is to give him a map tattoo across his shoulders and the back of his head. The second
image should work ne, but it rst needs to be molded and stretched to match the highlights
and shadows on the foundation image.
The best displacement maps tend to be those with the greatest variation in lights and
darks. They are created from a channel that you select. Select the
Back.jpg image. I’ve cho-
sen to duplicate the blue channel and use it as the base for my map because it gives the best
white-to-black ratio across the image. The highlights are brighter and the shadows are
darker than the other channels. Of course, I can tweak these further by using Dodge and
Burn, Brightness/Contrast, and so forth, but I prefer to choose the channel that will require
a minimal amount of adjusting.
Figure 1.51 Four layers, three
adjustments, and two altered
masks give us the final “brain
painting.
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