Step 8: Open The Image You Want To Use As Your Displacement Map

So far, all we have is a simple looking white border around our photo. Let's reshape our border into something much more interesting using a displacement map and Photoshop's Displace filter. Before we can use a displacement map though, we first need to create one, so open the photo you want to use as your displacement map. As I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, your best bet is to use a "texture" photo, meaning a close-up shot of something with an interesting surface to it, and the easiest way to obtain texture photos is to grab your digital camera, go outside and take some pictures! For example, here's a photo I took of some wood chips which were scattered on the ground along a walking path through a forest near my home:

This photo should work nicely as a displacement map.

Step 9: Desaturate The Image

We need to turn our photo into one that can be used as a displacement map. The first thing we need to do is remove all the colors from the image, and we can do that quickly and easily by going up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choosing Adjustments, and then choosing Desaturate:

You can also use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+U (Win) / Shift+Command+U (Mac). Either way will instantly remove all the colors from the photo, leaving us with a black and white image:

Step 10: Increase The Photo's Contrast With Levels

Next we need to increase the contrast in our image, making the darkest areas pure black and the brightest areas pure white. To do that, we'll use Photoshop's Levels command. Go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen once again, choose Adjustments, and then choose Levels, or use the keyboard shortcut to quickly access the Levels command, Ctrl+L (Win) / Command+L (Mac):

Either way brings up the Levels dialog box. In the center of the dialog box, you'll see the image histogram (the large black graph), and below the histogram are three small sliders - a black one on the far left, a white one on the far right, and a gray one in the middle. To make the darkest parts of the image pure black, click on the black slider on the far left and drag it over towards the right. As you drag, you'll see the dark areas in the image becoming darker and darker. Normally, when editing and retouching images, we'd only want to drag the black slider to the point where the left side of the histogram begins, but in this case, since we're doing this to give our displacement map more contrast, it's okay to drag the slider beyond that point. We'll lose some detail in the darkest areas of the image, but that's okay for what we're doing here.

Then, to make the brightest areas in the image pure white, click on the white slider on the far right and drag it towards the left. As you drag, you'll see the lightest areas in the photo becoming pure white. As with the black slider, if we were retouching the image, we'd only want to drag the white slider to the point where the right side of the histogram begins, but in this case, what we need most of all for our displacement map is lots of contrast in the image, so drag the white slider beyond that point until you have a lot of bright areas in the image. Again, we'll be losing some image detail in the brightest areas of the photo, but that's okay:

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. Your image should now have lots of contrast to it as we can see here with my image:

Step 11: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter

One final thing we should do with our image to prepare it for use as a displacement map is to apply a slight amount of blurring to it, just to remove any overly harsh edges. To do that, we'll use Photoshop's Gaussian Blur filter. Go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur:

When the Gaussian Blur dialog box appears, set the Radius value at the bottom to around 1 pixel. Again, we're just adding a subtle amount of blurring:

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box and apply the blur to the image.