Lessons

Lesson Info

Topomap Effect

I'm gonna make ah unique look of my face here uh, what I want to do in this particular case is, uh, everything there with with what a topo map looks like type of our, uh can't even say it typography no, not type I agree topography, you know? But when you look at ah like a mountain and it's made out of little rings that represent various altitudes were elevations, I should say I want to actually make it look like I did that to my face and then replaced the little lines it's going to make with the original colors from my face and this isn't just for this it's for a bunch of different effects that we could apply but let's take a look and see what we can accomplish. I'm going to first take this and turn into a smart object because if I turn this into a smart object, I might be able to do this in such a way where I only have to know how to do it once and I could always just drag these filters that end up applying to the image onto another layer and automatically have the same effect on that...

player, so I'm going to first go to the filter menu and I'm going to convert for smart filters the next thing I want to do is simplify things because I want the filters that I use I'm sorry that's kind scary and now I want the filters I used to ignore things like my pores and other slight variations, and so to accomplish that I'll go to the filter menu, I'm going to choose noise and I'm gonna choose median median is good at getting rid of a little specks and things you see what's doing my pores of my skin within this preview, what I want to do is bring up the median setting so that I can still recognize these shapes and objects that are in here, but I don't see those little fine details something about like that just trying to simplify it a little bit then what I'm going to do is apply a filter that is called filter style eyes find no not find his trace contour trace contour what trace contour does is it traces around one particular brightness level so it can trace around like find every place in here that's ten percent gray and draw a line around where that ten percent gray boundary ends in this little slider and here determines exactly what shade of grey would we trace around. You can have an eight bit image up to two hundred fifty six brightness levels, so this goes up to two fifty five it starts zero, so I'm just going to started out zero it only found a very small area zero I'll click okay and then what I'm gonna end up doing is just duplicating this layer I'll just type command j to duplicate it and I'm in a double click on the word median that's attached to this layer second use a different setting just double click and instead of using the setting I don't know what I actually didn't want a doubleclick I'm median I wanted tell should click on trace contour uh instead of using a setting of zero I'm gonna bring it up to a saying of twenty then I'll just click okay? I'm going to then have this and result combined with the other one I already have underneath it and I'll do that by changing the blending mode of this particular layer to a choice called multiply now if you saw it was just this tiny little area down here that came in and I'm just going to repeat this process over and over again and it's gonna build up in effect what I'm doing each time typing command jaded, duplicate and then I'm double clicking on the words trace contour to change the settings that are used in each time I'm going to bring it up by adding twenty tow what whatever was already in there so in this castle bringing up to forty click okay the layers already in multiply mode so it's combining with what's underneath all type command j again double click on the word trace contour in each time I'm just adding twenty two it was already there just keep doing that until you get to the highest number you can go to jade okay doubleclick entrees contour and just mentally add twenty command jaded duplicate doubleclick entrees contour increase it by twenty you keep doing this until it goes to the highest number it's capable of which will hit pretty soon I made it up to two hundred let's do it one more time because we're going to be so close to two fifty five that I don't think we'd be able to add twenty more be within that limit. So now this should look a bit like a topo map if you ever seen a map of mountains or other hills where it's made out of four rings that's what we end up having here but instead of being based on the height of various parts of the hill, these air based on the brightness levels within my image looks kind of interesting, but the colors are really weird, so I want to do something somehow to try to get the colors from my original photograph to fill in those lines. I could either do that or I could just put my original photo in the bottom layer and I'd see me with this on top, but I'm sure there are ways we can get just my original colors put inside those lines in order to accomplish that, what I'm going to do is get a layer that contains just my original image, so I'll take the top most layer and I'll just type command jay to get a duplicate, and I'll turn off the smart filters just turn off the eyeball so you can see we have the image without the filters applied it's in multiply mode at the moment, which is why you're seeing through to what's underneath. I don't need it in multiply mode so I can set it to normal and you'll see just a picture of me sitting there on top. Now somehow, I want to be able to get a selection, a selection that includes the shapes from the other layers to accomplish that I need to do something special. What I need to do is hide the top most layer, so I'm just going to turn off the eyeball on the top player so I can see what our end result looked like previously in to get a selection based on that. What I need to do is go to the channels panel, so I'll click on the word channels it's grouped in with my layers of my paths and to get the selection, which do is move your mouse on top of the little bitty thumbnail image for the top channel, this one move your mouse right to there and if you command, click on it that's control clicking and windows you're going to get a selection command clifton a little thumbnail image what that does is it makes a selection based in the brightness of what you currently have in your document. So if you look at what we currently have here it just selected all the white areas. So if it's selected all the white areas, that means all the little lines are not selected I'll go back to my layers turn on the eyeball for that top layer where I have a normal picture of me in all simply out of their mask. If I go to the bottom of my layers panel click in the layer mask icon now it ended up putting in my layer mask if you look closely at my image you see those lines sitting in there but what I really want is the opposite of this I want it so that layer mask doesn't make most of my face show up instead on lee makes it show up with lines are so with layer mask still active, all adjusted inverted inverting it will give me the opposite of what I currently have there we go if I hide the layers that are underneath no need to have him there anymore now it's hard to see it but this is just those lines with my original skin colors within them it's hard to see here though because we have nothing underneath it so I'll create a new solid color layer full of whatever color I want his background and put it underneath dragged that layer under it there we go that is my original skin colors within that look now if I wanted to apply this to a different picture, what I would need to do is replace the contents of that smart object the one that contains my picture when I replaced the contents of the smart object, it should update all the filters that were applied the median filter in the trace contour filter so we'd end up with that topo kind of look and the only thing I'd have to do manually is to create that layer mask in the very top layer where we go to the channels panel we command click on the top most channel to get the selection in ad the mask but most of the other work could be done for me so this is making it look a bit like a topo you could do a bunch of other things to it it's unlimited but if you want this to really come out mohr you could add effects mainly a little drop shadow I'll keep it snugged up relatively close to it well shay with him without the drop shadow just makes it show up a lot more but this is just one little effect there are many other effects you can create that have similar looks that might be more prominent as faras keeping the images integrity, but use the same general concept of getting a filter that usually gives you black lines or black shapes, and then using that to just limit where photo shows up so I could do the exact same thing and just use different filters once that I don't have to repeat over and over, and you'll see how we could get a similar effect, I'll save this one just in case I need to get back to it, though, and once it's done saving, I'll close, it should go open the original again. We have something start with, all right, let me just do it one more. That will be a similar concept, just a little less involved, as far as the number of filters he needed to get to that end result, and we'll see what we can do. So first, knowing that I'm gonna need in the end have my original picture, I'll simply duplicate this layer by timing command j and I'll hide the duplicate, because I just know I'm going to need it in the end, then I'll come down to my image, and what I'm going to apply is a filter that is just filter gallery, and then looks like we have a the filters in here already let's uh get rid of them. Who knows what I was doing in here last uh one I'm gonna end up trying out is poster edges I confined it there it is poster edges which you look at it see how it's trying lines on my face to emphasize things and then I might also in addition to that ad over here I have to click a little paper icon to add a second thing photocopy so now it's giving me just those pieces so it might look a little bit more like a drawing but it ends up giving me more of the fidelity of the image and I think it's probably using my foreground color because you feel blue that's in there I'm guessing if I slide this over yeah, see my foreground color blow if I want to change it I can always click okay, it's just that remembers these settings choose, undo and switch that overto black go right back to filter gallery and now it should remember the settings remember what I had just click ok? And ok, there it is. Now this the only thing I want to do with this is make sure the lines that we have are actually black right now they look to be somewhat grey and so I'll just simply adjust them we can adjust them using levels the upper left slider and levels forces things too black I can bring it in and tell most those lines are looking black and then I could go through the exact same process we went through in the previous image to get it to have the colors from the original image filling in these black lines and the way I ended up doing that previously was I went to the channels panel I held on the command key which is controlling windows, and I clicked on the little thumbnail picture I'm not clicking on the name I'm clicking on the picture command like back of my layers panel remember how when I started the technique I duplicated layer because I knew I was just going to need a untouched version of my photo welcome back to that layer turn on its little eyeball and a little later mask I can throw away the later that's underneath it then because that's just giving me the information that I painted in the layer mask and I can put something behind this like a white background I'm clicking on the adjustment layer poppet many the half black and half white thing and if you choose solid color that's one way of creating a layer full of a solid color put that underneath but just clicking on its name and dragging down and what we have at the moment is all those lines where the filter applied it's hiding the picture which is exactly the opposite of what I want and so with the little layer mask active on the layer that contains my picture I'll invert it's given the opposite there now that's the original colors within my picture but being used within the results of a filter so there are all sorts of filters and photoshopped that khun give you interesting looking and results things that there's like color half tone there is radio half tones there's all sorts of things in those filters but most of the time the end results end up either looking grey or black and have their just lacking color in by doing it this way we're able to get the colors of the original picture and bring him in. You can also consider painting on the mask more in modifying so if I grab my paintbrush tool and I paint with sea here I paint with white eat white will allow the image to come through. So if there's any part of the picture where I don't want this effect if I grab a normal brush and I come in here and paint let's say I want my shirt to look normal as long as I paint on the mask it should bring the image back harvard originally looked in that area and it looks to me like I was wearing a black shirt I can also use maybe a softer edge brush there's paint in portions of this part of my hat using a soft edge brush we can tell exactly where I stopped painting just be careful because you can't switch over in paint with black again to remove things because you'll remove the filter defect it's sitting right in the mask itself but I could come in here and say I want my eyes right there kind of frequently to be normal wanted even freak really literally the all right, but the main thing that takeaway from that is not that you want to end up with necessarily this exact and result it's that if you ever play in the filter gallery, you'll find that many of the filters if I come in there show you what I'm talking about there's a whole category of filters right here that if you look at these little previews that it's showing on a sample image, they deliver an awful lot of black and they can give you a really interesting looks in your photograph like this but you're going to lose all the color from your image so you can transform that in such a way where it's simply limbs limits where your photo shows up and so you do that by going to the channels pound command clicking on the top channel he'll give you selection and then use that selection when you add a layer mask you'll simply needed inverted we're done though and you can then have this. Look, if that's what you happen to want with the original photos, colors within it. So I think it makes these particular filter is much more useful.