How to use displacement mapping for texture wrapping and fake tatoos

Halloween is TOMORROW BABY!!!! My favourite time of year because it’s the only time I can delve into just how messed up I am and get away with it *evil laughter* today I’m going to be showing you how to “wrap” your text and textures around your image based on it’s depth (highlights and shadows).

Start with your base:

I shot this against a Gravity Backdrop. using a single big light

Creating the displacement map:
First things first, “CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E” on your top layer to stamp everything visible.

Now go to “Image>Duplicate” and duplicate your image (make sure it’s .psd). If it’s a huge file at this stage (.psb) you’ll need to duplicate the .psb, delete everything and then re-save it as a .pdf).

Now on your new file delete every layer except your most recent stamp layer.

Go to “Image>Mode” and change it to “8bit” (if it isn’t already) and also “Greyscale”. These are both a requirement for the displacement map to work correctly.

Go to “Filter>Noise>Median” and select a number that removes the detail while retaining the edges (should look like a Max Payne comic book). For me, 8 worked well!

Now “Blur>Gaussian Blur” and select a number that smooths out the light/dark transitions, again, somewhere around “8” worked well for me.

Add your text and rasterize it so that you can edit it: (duplicate the text layer with “CTRL+J” and then select both text layers and merge them with “CTRL+E”).