Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - How to Make a Stone Statue
Tutorial Overview
This free Adobe Photoshop tutorial will teach you step by step how to turn an ordinary photo into a stone statue using Adobe Photoshop's displacement map feature. The displacement tool is one of the most under-used Photoshop features which you will learn to love. By the end of this tutorial you will learn how easy it is to use.
Step 1 - Extracting the Image in Photoshop
Open your image in Photoshop and duplicate the background layer. We are going to extract the portrait from the background using a nifty little feature in photoshop called Extract. Select the duplicate background layer and run [Filter -> Extract]. If you haven't used the extract tool before don't worry, it's very easy. There are only 3 steps and its very effective for the job. First you use the magic marker tool to trace the outline of the subject, make sure that you don't leave any gaps or the next step won't work. Next you use the paint bucket to fill the area which you want to keep and click the preview button. Finally use the clean up tool, click to erase, alt-click to fill. When you're done press ok. Name this layer extract.
Step 2 - Preparing the Image for Transformation with Photoshop's Displacement Feature
Duplicate our extract layer twice and name them grayscale and displace . We will be using this for our displacement map. Let's get this to grayscale, run [Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate]. We are using this for our displacement map so we have to do some tweaking. If you're not familiar with the displacement tool, this is how it works in a nutshell: Brighter shades of gray make peaks and darker shades make valleys. First we need to lighten the entire picture a bit so go to [Image -> Adjustments -> Curves] and bring it up until it's bright as can be without losing any detail. In this picture we have some very dark area which we need to lighten. Let's start off with the eyes. Use the polygonal lasso tool to select the eyes and get a color sample from the brightest part of the whites. Fill in the dark pupils until you have effective glazed them over. We also need to lighten the dark clothing areas and hair so use the polygonal lasso and adjust curves on each of these areas to make a more medium gray You should have something that resembles the image on the right.
Step 3 - Photoshop Magic
Here's where the real fun begins. Copy your displace layer and paste it into a new image. Fill the background of the new image with medium gray (128, 128, 128) and save it as displace.psd. Go back to our main image. Find a good stone texture that fills the entire image, copy it into the top layer and name it stone. Load the transparent pixels from the displace layer into a selection [Select -> Load Selection], this is our mask for the stone layer. Go back to the stone layer and click the mask button to create our mask. Unlink this mask or it will mess up our displacement. Now run [Filter -> Distort -> Displace], use 30 for horizontal / vertical scale (you may need a different value here based on the size of your image), check "stretch to fit" and "wrap around". Finally set the blending mode to overlay and add in the background of your choice. I decided to go with a flashy background using a selection from the style palette.
Tutorial Summary
There you have it, you're very own immortal Photoshop statue! With practice I'm sure you will find many other uses for the displacement feature. If you've enjoyed this photoshop tutorial be sure to check out the many others in the Photoshop Tutorials & How To's section.