Photoshop Tutorial: texture Mapping

Written by Steve Patterson. In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, we’ll learn how to use the Displace filter and a displacement map to add an interesting texture to a person’s face in a photo. The displacement map will allow us to wrap the texture around the shape and contours of the face, rather than having it look like we simply pasted a flat texture on to the photo. Displacement maps were first introduced way back in Photoshop 2.0, so unless you’re still using the same version of Photoshop you bought 20 years ago, you should be fine. I’ll be using Photoshop CS4 throughout this tutorial, but any recent version will work.

To create the texture effect, you’ll need two images – the main photo that you want to apply the texture to and a photo to use as the texture itself. Here’s the image I’ll be applying my texture to:

The original image.

Here’s the image I’ll be using for my texture, a simple close up of a rock that I snapped outside:

The texture photo.

Here’s how it will look after we’ve mapped the texture on to the man’s face:

The final texture map effect.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Select The Channel With The Best Image Contrast

Let’s begin with the photo we’ll be applying the texture to. Switch over to your Channels panel for a moment. You’ll find the Channels panel grouped in with the Layers and Paths panels ("panels" are called "palettes" in earlier versions of Photoshop). Click on the Channels name tab at the top of the group to select it. hannel at the top:

The Channels panel (palette) in Photoshop.

To learn more about color channels and the RGB color mode in Photoshop, be sure to check out our full tutorial. We’re going to use one of these three channels (Red, Green or Blue) to create our displacement map, which will then be used to map our texture to the contours of the person’s face.