Displacement Maps - Graphics

Last night I spent some time learning about displacement maps. A displacement map is used to distort an image by displacing pixels based on the luminance of the map which is a grayscale image. Displacement maps are used to warp an image but they can also be used to project an image onto an uneven surface.

First I read a chapter of the book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, Vol. 2: Advanced Techniques by Trish Meyer and Chris Meyer because I was interested in using displacement maps in video. A displacement map in a video can be used to create an undulating image like in a dream sequence. You can also create an invisible man effect by having a figure in an underlying layer displace the topmost layer.

However, I did not have many displacement maps to experiment with so I then read a chapter of The Photoshop 7 Wow! Book by Jack Davis. This book has a tutorial on the other use of displacement maps, to project an image onto an uneven surface. It showed me how to project the American flag onto a cliff face without affecting the rock climber who was masked out. I was able to apply the same technique to a random image with good results. I was very pleased with this technique so I then spent some time documenting the complicated series of steps required to use displacement maps in Photoshop.

 You may be wondering what this has to do with web development and ASP.NET. I think a web developer has some responsibility to know Photoshop. I've been working alone as a freelance developer so I don't have a graphics designer on my team to handle the creative work. Clients often expect me to do graphics design work because they just see it as more technical work that only requires a computer genuis. Creating a web site design from scratch is very time consuming so I just recommend buying a template from Template Monster. I'm very good at customizing a web site design by editing the CSS and working with the PSD file in Photoshop but I really need something that has already been designed.

Microsoft does not have many content creation tools which is mostly left to the arty Macintosh crowd. Their only video editing software is Movie Maker which is popular with some vloggers but not very sophisticated. The only graphics program features I can think of are some limited toolbars you find in Word and FrontPage. I've begun to use Microsoft Expression Web which is superior to FrontPage in supporting web design standards but only in terms of markup and CSS. Silverlight may be promoted as a signficant step towards creating rich media applications but it still seems too heavy on the developer side and does not address the need for tools to create the eye candy and the audio and video content. I've seen numerous examples of rich media applications which actually allow you to create media content online which demonstrates the growing need for user generated content creation tools in the social networking space.