A texture map, commonly known in Photoshop as a displacement map, is a special effect that will apply a realistic texture to an existing flat image.

For this tutorial, we’re going to add some graffiti to a brick wall and make it look as real as possible.

Pick the best channel

Open your image in Photoshop and go to the Channels window. The best channel to use for this technique is the one with the most contrast. Click on each channel to view the differences between black and white areas. The Red channel was the best choice in our image so we clicked it once to select it. With the best channel selected, choose Duplicate Channel from the Channels flyout menu (A).



Note: Our image happens to be in RGB color mode, but this technique will work for CMYK images too.

In the Duplicate Channel dialog box, select New for Document Destination. Give the duplicate channel a name and then click OK (B). The duplicate channel is a new file and should open automatically.



Adjust levels and blur

With your new psd file active, go to Image > Adjustments > Levels. In the Levels dialog box, slide the input level points to exaggerate the contrast in your image. Under the histogram, pull the black point to the right near the first ramp up. Pull the white point to the left near the last ramp up. Pull the grey point so it aligns directly below the highest peak (C).



Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. We used a Radius of 1 pixel. The blur will help smooth over the rough edges in our texture map. Save this image and close it; you’ll use it later.

Add the text

Go back to your original image (our brick image) and select the RGB channel in the Channels window to turn all the channels back on. Now, go to the Layers window and create a new layer . Make sure the new layer is above your image layer. The new layer is probably named Layer 1.

We’re going to spray paint the name of our company, IC9design, onto these bricks. Select the Text tool and make sure Layer 1 is the active layer. Click once with your Text tool where you want the text to start and type in your text. Photoshop will use the text attribute settings from the last time you used the Text tool. So highlight your text and change the font and font size. We chose Impact and set it to 20pt (D).



You’ll want to experiment with different typefaces to find more realistic graffiti-styled fonts. We’re using the heaviness of the font Impact to demonstrate this visual effect.

Texture your text
After you format your text, select the Move tool to unhighlight your text. Now go to Filter > Distort > Displace. The text needs to be rasterized for the Displace filter to work so you’ll get a warning asking you to rasterize the type. Click OK (E1).

Click OK to open the Displace dialog box. We set our horizontal and vertical scale to 2. Since the mortar depth between each of our bricks isn’t very deep, we chose a smaller value. Smaller values tend to create more realistic results. We left the other options alone because our texture map is the exact size of our image (E2). Click OK.

The next dialog box will ask you to select the image to use as your displacement map. Find the texture image you made earlier and click Open (E3).



Refine your texture
The effect doesn’t look all that good on its own. The effect added some ripples in the areas between each brick, but it doesn’t look like it was painted on yet. There are a couple of adjustments we can make so it will look more realistic.

First, switch your layer mode to Overlay (F). Hey, that looks much better already!



On a brick wall this old, it would be nice to somehow make the paint look like it was peeling off and wearing away. We think the text still looks too perfect and needs to be roughed up a bit.

Select the Eraser tool . We chose one of the scatter brushes from the Natural Brushes 2 collection to use as our eraser profile. Reduce the Master Diameter to about 25px and set the Opacity to 60%. Find where the letter color meets a gap between the bricks, or a brick edge, and click a few times in that area with the eraser tool, moving it slightly each time. Do this at random across each letter so the weathering process looks natural.

For the final touch, add a layer style to your text layer. Click the Add Layer Style button at the bottom of the Layers window and choose Inner Shadow from the list. Set the Blend Mode to Multiply, the Opacity to 25%, and the Distance to 1px. Then click OK. This will add some grime to your text color. Your final result should look similar to ours (G).