Mapping A Texture To A Face In Photoshop
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Step 7: Select The Person's Face In The Photo
We're done working on our displacement map at this point, so switch back over to your original photo (the one you're going to apply the texture to). If you're still seeing the image in black and white in the document window, it's because we still have a single channel selected in the Channels panel. Click on the RGB channel at the top of the Channels panel to bring back the full color version of the image. The RGB channel isn't really a channel at all, it's simply the composite of the three individual channels and it's what allows us to see the image in full color:
Switch back over to the Layers panel as well by clicking on the Layers name tab at the top of the panel group. We need to select the area of the photo that we want to map the texture to. Since we want to map the texture only to the person's face, we'll first need to select it. Use the selection tool of your choice (Lasso Tool, Pen Tool, etc.) to draw a selection around the area you need. In my case, I'll use the Lasso Tool to draw a selection around the man's face and the top of his head:
The only problem is, if I was to apply the texture right now, his eyes would be covered by the texture since they're currently inside the selected area. I need to remove his eyes from the selection, and the easiest way to do that is to simply hold down my Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, which temporarily places the Lasso Tool in Subtract From Selection mode, indicated by a small minus sign ("-") in the bottom right corner of the lasso icon. Drag a selection around each eye to remove them from the selected area. When you're done, you should see selection outlines around the person's head and their eyes. Only the area between the selection outlines is now selected, which means the eyes will no longer be affected:
Be sure to check out our Full Power Of Basic Selections tutorial for more information on working with selections in Photoshop.
Step 8: Save The Selection
We don't need our selection at this very moment but we will need it soon, so let's save it. Go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Save Selection:
This brings up the Save Selection dialog box. I'm going to name my selection "face", then I'll click OK to save the selection for later use:
Once you've saved the selection, press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac) to quickly deselect the selection, removing the selection outlines from the image.
