Have you ever wondered how to make an image look like it was "painted on a brick wall" or "Written in sand"? If you, one way to do that sort of thing is by using a technique called "Displacement Maps."

Here are a couple Photoshop tutorials:

http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/dispmap/dispmap.htm
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/cb/displace.html

I think Russell Brown does this better (more insightful / complete):

http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/uc/ucrb_flagpast1.htm

http://www.russellbrown.com/images/tips_movies/LiquifyAlert.mov
(Here using the liquify filter instead of displace. This is a movie, dial-up folks won't want to download this.)

-Mark

OK, I couldn't resist this one. Several months ago I used the Russell Brown technique on the challenge referenced below. Since then, my student picked it up and ran with it. Last week during a heavy downpour, I lost the ceiling in my bathroom. Liquify alert to the rescue again. I quickly (and I mean quickly because the quality of the sign isn't the greatest) made a note and posted it to the door until we could get the problem fixed. Enjoy my little laugh. If I didn't find humor in this situation, I truly would be in that outhouse in the lower part of the picture. :)

http://www.retouchpro.com/challenges/showphoto.php/photo/3833/sort/1/size/medium/cat/598/page/

Submitted by member RichardBrackin:

Here's one that has some great displacement maps tutorials (among others):

http://thegoldenmean.com/technique/techniqueIndex.html

Just a suggestion.......it would be a big help if you specified that your tutorial is for Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or whatever.

Not all of us use Photoshop and it would save us a lot of time looking only to learn that it is Photoshop only.

Thanks,

Steve