Technical Slop

Broken China

Drop a plate and it shatters. Pieces and shards everywhere. Sure, easy to do in PS with the Polygon Lasso Tool. But where's the Displace edification in that? Bah! Let's use Displace.

Meet Bikerchic. She's a lot of fun to play with. A long time ago I introduced her in a few examples that I had whipped out.

Anybody remember that? Probably not. But that doens't matter. What this shows is what I call the Zoom Cube. See how it magnifies with positive values? Pretty neat, I think. It can also do a few other things. If you want to see some really cool things with the Zoom Cube, make you own and use values over 100%. Ohhh... ahhh...

But our interest in the Zoom Cube isn't in how the gradient work in a dmap. Our interest is using it for a reference point on how solid colours in a dmap work.

Yeah, that's more like it. What we are interested in is the relationship between the center of the Zoom Cube (50% Gray) and any given colour around it. You see, a dmap with a solid colour does an offset. And that offset is directly related to that colour's position in the Zoom Cube as it relates to the center. Kai explains this and the math so much better than I can as of this writing.

Now it's time to meet our Alpha channel with the pieces in it. These pieces are a quick hack using the Line Tool with some various widths. You will need this in the dmap and in the picture to be displaced. Not too tough to do with a quick C&P.

This is a quick hack. I have a better method, but this will do for this example.

One thing a lot of people don't really take advantage of is the fact that a dmap is a PSD. Layer it up, folks! Don't be shy. It's a PSD, so treat it as such.

Got your Zoom Cube all set? Good. New Layer and use the Alpha to fill with 50% Gray.

You will really want to zoom in for this, but my clipboard and PS don't get along. This graphic will have to do. You want to use the Eyedropper to select the Zoom Cube colour at the tip of the piece/shard. Then fill in the corresponding transparent region.

Man, I hope that makes sens

There. All done with this part. Save it and we are almost finished with this little project.

Now it's time to Displace away. I started with 100/100, but it looked funny. So I tried it with a few other values. I finally settled on 90/90. With the Alpha channel, it's easy to clear out the area that wasn't diplaced.

Just for fun, I pieced it back together by hand. I went to the Alpha channel, used the Magic Wand to select a single piece, then moved it right on the layer.