Step 3: Apply The Median Filter To The Displacement Map Image

For these next few steps, we'll be working on the displacement map image that we just created, so ignore the original image for now. We need to remove much of the detail from the person's face, otherwise all of the little pores, bumps, stubble and small skin imperfections will cause problems. We'll use a couple of Photoshop's filters to smooth things out for us. The first one that we'll apply is the Median filter, which is great at reducing small details while keeping the edges that define an object intact. Go up to the Filter menu in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen, choose Noise, and then choose Median:

This will bring up the Median filter's dialog box. Keep an eye on your image in the document window as you drag the Radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box. The slider determines how much detail is removed from the image. The further you drag the slider towards the right, the more detail you'll remove. The idea is to remove as much detail from the person's face as possible while still keeping important edges intact. There's no specific setting to use here since it will depend on the size of the image you're working on, but I'm going to set my Radius value to around 8 pixels:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box. Here we can see that I've managed to reduce the detail in the man's face significantly while still keeping the defining edges nice and sharp:

Step 4: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter

Next, we'll apply the Gaussian Blur filter to finish off our displacement map. Go back up to the Filter menu and this time, choose Blur, then choose Gaussian Blur:

When the Gaussian Blur dialog box appears, use the Radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box the same way you used it with the Median filter a moment ago, keeping an eye on your image in the document window as you drag the slider towards the right to apply more blurring to the image. Again, there is no specific setting to use here since it will depend on your image, but the goal is to apply enough blurring to smooth things out while still being able to make out important details (eyes, nose, mouth, etc). I'm going to increase my Radius value to around 13 pixels:

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. Photoshop applies the blurring to the displacement map:

Step 5: Convert The Image To Grayscale

Finally, let's convert our displacement map image to the Grayscale color mode. Technically, this isn't absolutely necessary since Photoshop can use displacement maps saved in other color modes as well, but you can run into problems if your displacement map contains too many channels, so converting the image to Grayscale, which limits the image to a single channel, is a good way to avoid those problems. Go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choose Mode (which is short for Color Mode), then choose Grayscale:

Step 6: Save The Image As A Photoshop .PDF File

Now that we've prepared our image for use as a displacement map, we need to save it, and we need to save it specifically as a Photoshop .PSD file. This is the only file type that Photoshop can use for displacement maps, although I have no idea why that is. Sometimes, you just have to accept things, and this is one of those times. Go up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose Save As:

This brings up the Save As dialog box. Give the file a descriptive name. I'm going to name mine "displace.psd", and make sure you select Photoshop for the Format option so it's saved as a .PSD file. I find that the easiest place to save displacement maps is in a "displacement maps" folder that I've created on my desktop, so that's where I'll save my file to:

Click the Save button when you're done to save the file. You can now close out of the displacement map's document window.

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