Heart D-Map Detail
I'm attaching a screen cap of the Layers and Channels. Scroll up and down as necesssary.
First I started with finding a decent map to reflect. I have stock photo CD with lots of pictures of architure. So I grabbed a few and ran Spherize on them real quick as a test. This is just to get a quick feel for how well a given photo will work for a reflection map. I eventually settled on an outdoor photo of a brick building with lots of windows.
Then I got busy on making the D-Map.
Started a New Doc at 500x500.
Put in the Zoom Cube and Inverted it (ctrl + i). Inverted it just to keep things straight.
Then I laid down Guides that go through the center of the document.
Select the Custom Shape and Heart pre-fab.
Starting in the center, I held shift + alt and dragged out the heart shape.
Load the selection of the heart layer and toss into Alpha, named Mask.
Copy Mask and work on the copy.
With Mask selection still loaded, Gauss at 40, 20, 10, 5, 2
Then deselect (ctrl + d) and Gauss 1
(I'm pretty sure those Gauss numbers are correct.)
Then I went exploring the contours, or z-depth, of the newly created height map.
I did this with Select > Colour Range.
With that open, I set Fuzziness to around 40 and ran the Eyedropper all over the place.
I noticed that the outside of the heart was too tight and that the inside was too broad. Kind of hard to explain.
Not happy with what I was seeing, I canceled Select > Colour Range and hit Curves (ctrl + m).
In Curves, I grabbed the middle and brought it down a tad.
That created a little more black at the edges and a little less white on the inside.
I did Curves on a copy called Height 2.
Happy with Height 2, I cut-n-pasted it into the Layers palette.
Set Blending Mode to Exclusion.
Added a Curves Ad-Layer and clipped/grouped it.
Double-checked to make sure that Blend Clipped as Group was turned on for the Exclusion layer.
Started a new Layer.
Loaded Mask.
Select > Inverse (ctrl + shift + i).
Edit > Fill with 50% Gray.
Deselect (ctrl + d).
Gauss around 1.5 or 2 or something to soften up the edges.
Save and Displace away.
Played with different percentages.
Messed around with the Curves Ad-Layer.
Settled on something that I liked.
To touch it up, I did some good ol' fashioned cut-n-paste.
First, I cut-n-pasted Height 2 into an alpha channel of the building doc.
Did a quick Free Transform (ctrl + t) to make it the same size as the building doc.
New Layer in the Layers palette.
Edit > Fill with 50% Gray.
Filter > Render > Lighting Effects and used Height 2.
(Messed with Lights and other things until happy.)
Set it to Hard Light.
Then I ran Curves (ctrl + m) on the Hard Light Layer for a tweak.
I also cut-n-pasted Mask into the building doc.
Used that to add a few other tweaks.
Like a stroke of 2 or 3 pixels and a gradient background.
That should do ya.
Now show me what ya got.
Make me proud.
Bring a tear to my eye.
