I downloaded a 3d poster mockup from this website

The zip file contains 001.psd which allows you to put your poster in it and then creates a sort of wrinkled, 3d-ish texture to your artwork.

I previously kind-of achieved this by changing blend modes and using filter > distort > displace. However, what I can accomplish with 001.psd is more beautiful.

My question is, how can I create the same type of effect with for example this image:

enter image description here

I am interested most in giving it the same kind of 3d texture, kind of like emboss.

I searched youtube and other platforms but really couldn't find the answer. Any help would be appreciated.

  • Hi. Welcome to GDSE. The psd you linked to uses a 3D mesh from a depth map to create an actual 3D texture, onto which an image is added. There's a very good tutorial here on youtube. Sorry it's too long and complex do a tutorial here. – Billy Kerr Jan 20 at 14:38
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is essentially asking for a tutorial on demand. There are a ton of tutorials already out there. I realize you probably don't know what to call it. Which makes it difficult to search. That particular file has simply used Photoshop's Puppet Warp on a 3D smart object layer to manually create the distortions. However, you can achieve this much, much, easier via a Displacement Map. Here's one good tutorial for you on Displacement Maps. – Scott Jan 20 at 17:28
  • graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/79803/79637 is a pretty detailed solution that may work for you – wch1zpink Jan 20 at 19:21
  • @BillyKerr Thank you. I quickly skipped through the youtube video and it looks very promising. I am definitely going to try that tomorrow. I'm really happy that you found that one. Thank you. As Scott mentioned, I really didn't know what to call it and that is why I couldn't find any videos on it. I understand that you want to close it, although I am really happy with the answer provided later on below. Thank you Scott for clearing things up about the PSD file, explaining Puppet Warp and providing that tutorial. wch1zkpink, thanks, I am going to read into that. In conclusion, thank you all! – mroWsymaS Jan 20 at 23:49

Displacement map creates pushes and pulls only to a certain direction which is defined by horizontal and vertical displacement amplitudes in the displace dialog. So, do not expect it to make those criss-cross wrinkles which your black fabric seems to have.

If you still want to use your image as a displacement map for an image, that image must not have many long straight lines such as text or rectangular shapes, because one can easily see the displacement distortion is much simpler than the apparent foldings in you fabric.

If you distort an image which has quite small curved shapes and no long straight lines, the result can be plausible. The edges must be modified manually to fit, if they must be wrinkled.

An example

The brightness range of your image is at first stretched with the curves tool to cover 0...255:

enter image description here

Then a copy of it is used as a displacement map for an image and another copy is used with blending mode hard light to create the shading to the distorted image layer:

enter image description here

The original floral pattern has only curved lines, so the contradiction between the shading and the distortion isn't apparent at the first glance. The measuring tape at the left is long and straight, but it happens to have got a plausible distortion, too because the wrinkles at the left edge happen to go across the tape.

The next example shows that the result is virtually useless for another image with long straight lines. The original image:

enter image description here

The distorted and shaded image:

enter image description here

The shading works well, but the distortion is totally wrong to this shading. You must create the distortion manually. You can for ex. use the puppet warp transformation. As already said in the comments, by constructing a smart filter you can apply the same distortion to other images. Unfortunately the amount "how much distortion I must add" depends on the image content.

Here only a few points are moved a little around X and T:

enter image description here

Convert the image layer at first to a smart layer, then apply the puppet warp. The smart filter is generated automatically.

If you need exact results, the whole project should be performed in 3D. It's beyond the scope of this answer.

  • I just read your extensive answer and I am so thankful that you took the time to explain all this. It is really elaborate, clear and notably very kind. Thank you so much. I am going to try playing with puppet warps and you definitely taught me something seemingly very important about the displacement map. It became very clear with the two examples. All-in-all, thank you again and I'm going to try that smart filter. Have a good day! – mroWsymaS Jan 20 at 23:41
  • there are tools that can give better guestimates about the diplacement form the height map info (which is close to what you have). But yeah if thsi was a actual 3d app then you could make a real spplacement map – joojaa Jan 21 at 8:25

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