How to Conform Text to a Surface Using a Displacement Map in Photoshop
There's nothing that screams "fake" more than a dynamic background surface covered in boring, flat text. Giving your text or shape layer the same depth as the background it sits on will instantly improve the realism of your designs. This tutorial will teach you how to wrap your text and shape layers so that they conform to the surface of the layer underneath. Step 1 Open the background image you plan to use. We'll need to make some slight alterations to make it suitable for use as a displacement map. Click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 1 pixels. Click Image > Adjustments > Desaturate to make it black and white. Save your slightly blurred, grayscale image as a PSD file to your hard drive, then close it within Photoshop. Step 2 Re-open your original background image in Photoshop. Create some text using the Type tool. Displacement Maps can only be applied to rasterized layers, or to Smart Objects. Right c...
