1. Adding the crack (highlight)
In this Photoshop tutorial we're going to use the following image:
You can save this image in Windows on your hard drive by right clicking on it and selecting Save Picture As...
(I don't own a Mac, so I don't know what the procedure is on a Mac).
Select the Pencil tool in the tool bar and choose a master diameter of 1 px by opening the Brush Preset picker window in the option bar:
Create a new layer by clicking on the Create a new layer icon 
at the bottom of your layers palette and rename it to White crack by double clicking on its name in the layers palette.
Press the letter D on your keyboard to make the fore- and background color black and white.
Press the letter X on your keyboard to switch the fore- and background color; the foreground color is now white:
We're now going to draw the crack.
While holding down the left mouse key start in the top/left corner and draw a crack over a distance that's about 1/5 of the final size of the crack. Once you've reached that point, release the mouse button but don't(!) move the mouse, press the right bracket key ] on your keyboard once, to increase the master diameter of the pencil with 1 pixel and continue where you left off. Stop at 2/5 of the total length of the crack, release the mouse key again, press the right bracket key ] to increase the diameter another 1 pixel and continue drawing the crack.
At 3/5 of the distance you continue by using the bracket key [ instead to decrease the diameter to 2 pixels and you repeat this again at 4/5 so that you draw the last part of the crack with a diameter of 1 pixel.
The result could be something like this:
Make sure that you draw a random line with some sharp corners, a few bends and some straight parts.
At this point the beginning and ending of the crack stops too abrupt. We're going to fix that by using a mask.
Add a mask to this layer by clicking on the Add layer mask icon 
at the bottom of the layers palette.
At that moment the mask is the active area (notice the double border and the mask icon 
in front of the layer (A)), so any further edits will take place on this mask only:
Grab the brush tool 
in the tool bar and select a soft brush with a diameter of 40 in the option bar:
Set the opacity of this brush in the option bar to 25%:
Make sure that your foreground color is black: 
Now paint with black over the edges of the crack to make them fade (more transparent).
Use the following before & after rollover image as a guideline:
Continue by changing the blending mode to overlay in the layers palette and select an opacity of 75% (see screenshot on next page) .
2. Adding the crack (shadow)
Click on the layer's thumbnail (the one with the checker board pattern) and while holding down the left mouse button drag and drop this layer on the Create a new layer icon at the bottom of your layers palette and rename this new layer to Black crack by double clicking on its name in the layers palette:
Press Ctrl + i (Command + i on the Mac) to invert the crack; it will now be black.
Important: the crack won't look black when you look at it in your document window, since the layer's blending mode is still set to overlay and the opacity is still 75%, since both were copied when we duplicated the White crack layer.
Change the blending mode of the Black crack layer in the layers palette to Color Burn, set the Opacity back to 100% and select a Fill of 85%:
With this layer selected, grab the Move tool 
in your tool bar and press the cursor right 
key on your keyboard only once, then press the cursor up 
key also only once.
At this point you should have something like this:
Notice that by using this method we're blending the shadow with the actual texture of the wall, which results in fine visible details inside the crack which makes it all look slightly more realistic.
We're now going to do a little trick to get rid of both identical layer masks, to end up with only one.
First click on the Create a new set icon 
to create a new layer set (in Photoshop CS2 called a layer group).
Now click on the mask that's attached to the Black crack layer, hold down the left mouse key, move your mouse cursor until it's on top of the Add layer mask icon and release your mouse button:
This will copy the layer mask that was attached to the Black crack layer to the layer set, since the layer set was the active layer at that time.
In Photoshop CS2 we can duplicate a mask by holding down the Alt key (Option key on the Mac), click on the mask and drag and drop it onto the target layer:
Next we're going to remove the masks of the Black crack and White crack layer by dragging (A) each mask to the Delete layer 
icon at the bottom of the layers palette. When asked "Apply mask to layer before removing?" simply click on the discard button:
After removing the masks, continue by dragging the Black crack layer (B) to the layer set.
Do the same for the White crack layer (C).
Note: don't drag the White crack layer first and after that the Black crack layer because then you end with the White crack layer as the first layer in our set, which is of course not what we want.
Continue by double clicking on the Set's name and rename it to Crack:
I'm showing you all this to understand some of the advantages of layer sets/groups. At this point we can easily drag the crack around without having to worry about linking them. We can also easily drag the crack to a different document if we prefer to do so, because it's now just a matter of dragging the set/group instead of the individual layers. We can now also easily hide the crack by simply clicking on the eye icon in front of the layer. Of course if we have multiple cracks it's going to be a lot easier to keep the layers palette less cluttered when they're all in one set/group.
The other advantage, especially for this tutorial, is that we now have a single mask, which allows us to make a single change that will affect both the black and the white crack, which is important if we want to make the beginning or ending part of the crack fade away.
So go ahead, if you want to make some final adjustments to the mask, do that right now.
In the end we should have something like this:
Final words
Remember that this is just one way to create a crack. What all cracks have in common is a shadow and highlight area and a crack that doesn't have the same diameter over its full length. This tutorial has shown you one method as how both can be achieved in Photoshop.
Feel free to use layer sets/groups when ever you feel like it. I use them quite often when needed, because they allow me to make global changes, they allow me to easily move a group of layers and allow me to have a single mask.
When I make more complicated pieces I tend to assign objects to these layer sets/group and this tutorial the object is Crack. Especially when you have a lot of layers you'll keep your layers palette very organized using this approach.
I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial.
from: http://www.lunacore.com/
6/30/2007
PHOTOSHOP: Realistic Crack
PHOTOSHOP: Cross Processing
Cross processing means that you deliberately process photographic film in a wrong chemical solution. The effect of this is that photos have unnatural colours and high contrast. I will show you how to achieve this effect in Photoshop by using curves. Below you can see an example: the left is original and the right one has been cross processed.
You can download the files from the table below, including the curves file which we will create in this tutorial. If you are too lazy to adjust the curves manually you can also just download the avc file, then you can start applying the effect immideately.
Step 1Before 
After 
Crosprocessing 
Open the original file in Photoshop. Create a new Curves Adjustment Layer.
Cross Processing Step 2
Add a Brightness/Contrast Layer
Step 3 Add a Solid Color Layer
And use a yellow colour like #fcff00. Set the layer style to multiply and opacity to 20%.
I advise you to save the Curves Adjustments Layer, that way you can easily apply the effect to other photos with minimal effort.
Finish
from: http://www.koops-projects.com
6/28/2007
PHOTOSHOP: Using Displacement Maps
Use The Displace Filter & Displacement Maps To Make A Realistic Flag
Adapted from "Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Maximum Performance" by Mark Galer
Liquid pixels - wrapping pixels over undulating silk
The layer blend modes are an effective way of merging or blending a pattern or graphic with a three-dimensional form. By using the blend modes the flag in this project can be modified to respect the color and tonality of the undulating silk beneath it.
The highlights and shadows that give the silk its shape can however be further utilized to wrap or bend the flag so that it obeys the material’s shape and sense of volume. This can be achieved by using the Displace filter in conjunction with a ‘displacement map’. The ‘map’ defines the contours to which the flag must conform. The final effect can be likened to ‘shrink-wrapping’ the flag to the 3-D form of the undulating silk.
How it works: The brightness level of each pixel in the map directs the filter to shift the corresponding pixel of the selected layer in a horizontal or vertical plane. The principle on which this technique works is that of ‘mountains and valleys’. Dark pixels in the map shift the graphic pixels down into the shaded valleys of the 3-D form whilst the light pixels of the map raise the graphic pixels onto the illuminated peaks of the 3-D form.
STEP 1
A silk dressing gown was photographed using the available light. For this image to act as an effective displacement map the contrast must however be expanded. An effective way of expanding contrast in Photoshop Elements is to duplicate the layer and set the top layer to ‘Overlay’ blend mode. Note the changes to the histogram by viewing the histogram in the Histogram palette.
STEP 2
Go to the Image menu and from the Mode submenu select ‘Grayscale’. Choose the option ‘Flatten’ when the Warning dialog box appears.
Note > The displacement map must be in Grayscale otherwise the color channels will upset the appropriate displacement effect.
STEP 3
To further improve the effectiveness of the displacement map we must blur the image slightly. This effect of blurring the map will smooth out the lines of the flag as it wraps around the contours of the silk. Too much blur and the undulations will be lost, too little and the lines of the flag will appear jagged as it is upset by any minor differences in tone. Go to ‘Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur’ and start by selecting a Radius of around 10 pixels. Increase or decrease this radius when working with images of a different resolution.
STEP 4
Save the image (displacement map) as a Photoshop (PSD) file. Close the blurred Grayscale file as the map is now complete. You will need to choose this file when the Displacement filter asks for the location of your map, so make a note of where it has been saved to on your computer.
STEP 5
Open or select the RGB silk file that has not been blurred. Also open the flag image. With the flag image as the active window, choose ‘All’ from the Select menu and then choose ‘Copy’ from the File menu. Now make the silk image the active window and choose ‘Paste’ from the File menu. Alternatively you can just drag the thumbnail of the flag image in the Layers palette into the image window of the silk image if you can see both image windows on your desktop.
Set the blend mode of the flag layer to ‘Multiply’. If you are intending to displace a graphic or a texture it is worth ensuring that you have some elbow room (when we displace the flag it will come away from, and reveal, the edges of the background layer if they are the same size). Use the Free Transform command to enlarge the flag layer so that it is a little larger than the background layer.
STEP 6
Go to ‘Filter > Distort > Displace’. Enter in the amount of displacement in the Horizontal and Vertical fields of the Displace dialog box. The size of the displacement is dependent on the resolution of the image you are working on. Choose amounts of 40 for both fields for the Flag.jpg used in this project. Increasing the amount greater than 60 for either the Horizontal or Vertical scale will increase the amount of distortion in this project image, but will also start to break off islands of color from the design of the flag indicating that the limit of the effect has been exceeded. Choose the displacement map you created earlier to complete this step. Your flag should now miraculously conform to the contours of the silk. If you are not entirely happy with the results go to the Edit menu and choose ’Undo’. Repeat the process choosing smaller or greater amounts in the Displace dialog box.
Note > It helps if the graphic or pattern image file you are displacing is slightly larger than the image file you created the map for. This will ensure that no gaps appear between the distorted graphic and the edge of the image window.
STEP 7
Add an adjustment layer and drag the Highlight slider to the start of the histogram to extend the dynamic range and make the highlights and midtones appear brighter. Your dramatic and colorful background is now complete.
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