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First there were Layerd D-Maps. Then I got to playing with gradients. When I understood gradients, my productivity exploded. While gradients are good, they are still linear, so to speak. Even if you fiddle with the mid-points in the grad, they are still linear. Because of this, I felt like something was still missing. I was pulling some pretty humerous things to get what I wanted. Even with all of the tricks that I had learned, I still had one last wall to break through.

One day it came. It was definitely one of my bigger epiphanies. It hit me real hard after I had read Curves by Steve. At last I had the final piece to a massive puzzle. I could now sculpt with complete control and intent.

What is about to follow is the foundation for some of my favorite, "advanced" D-Map making tricks.

I will be going quite a bit faster than usual. Hopefully I have laid down enough of a foundation for you to understand the little, explicit things that I'm leaving out.

Curve It Skew

We've got PSD files for D-Maps! Woo! So far it has just been a little taste of what can be done with extra Layers tossed into the D-Map. Now it's time to get a little beefy.

Curves, when applied to a gradient, is very cool. Let's take a romp with skewing.

 

Biker Chic. Note the differences in this version. It just helps illustrate.

 

This is our first D-Map. White down the center and 50% Grey down the sides. Basic gradient work. Shouldn't be too hard to build.

Save it as PSD and let's get to work.

 

This is what the D-Map does to Biker Chic with 50% vertical.

The White down the middle of the D-Map grabs pixels from 64px straight down. Then Grabitude lessens to 0px as it gets to the edges.

Do you see what I mean about gradients being linear? Should be perfectly straight lines, but they aren't and I have no idea why.

 

Back to the D-Map to add an Adjustment Layer. This is a Curves Ad-Layer. Since there are no values below 128 in the D-Map, only the highlighted part will affect the D-Map.

Save it again as a PSD (again), and let's see what it does.

 

Woo! Look at that! Linear be gone! Major spiffy.

That was fun. Let's try a variation.

 

This is the base for our next D-Map. You doknow what it does, don't you?

 

Add a Curves Ad-Layer and make it like so. Save it as a PSD and let's check it out.

 

Oh man! Once again, linear be gone!

What's so cool about this variation is that you can do it with almost any profile. If you can make a curve in the Curves Ad-Layer, then you can bend a target to that curve. Very major spiffy.

 

That was fun, but not really anything that can't be done with Shear. So, what's the point? Concept, you fool! Edification and undestanding.

 

This is our next D-Map. Across the top is a field of black. Across the bottom is a field of white. In the middle is a gradient linking the two. Not terribly difficult to build.

 

Several examples of Curving the new D-Map is below with only horizontal Displacement. The first one is the D-Map with no Curving -- it's all straight lines. The second one, the one in the middle, is a "lazy s" Curve. The linearness of the first one is all gone. The last one is a random doodle in the Curves Ad-Layer. Very cool.

 

 

Not exactly anything that can't be accomplished with Shear and some creative butchering. The main thing is that you are now aware of how to do such things with Displace.

 

 

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