# I Need To Photoshop a Face So It Looks Like It's Pressing Against Fabric.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-photoshop-a-face-so-it-looks-like-its-pressing-against-fabric/516466>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 5, 2009, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-photoshop-a-face-so-it-looks-like-its-pressing-against-fabric/516466 "2009-11-05T20:36:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![King\_Might](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e8cbc/32.png) [@King\_Might](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/King_Might)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-photoshop-a-face-so-it-looks-like-its-pressing-against-fabric/516466/1 "2009-11-05T20:36:35Z")

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I need to create an image of a person pressing their face into a piece of fabric. I think I can do it with a lighting effect or displacement map, but I’m not sure what source images I should be looking for.

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**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-photoshop-a-face-so-it-looks-like-its-pressing-against-fabric/516466/2 "2009-11-05T21:09:41Z")

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You can probably get a reasonable approximation of the distortion using a spherical map; it will spread out things close to the center more than things along the edges, so center it on the nose or closest point to you. You can then add a partially opaque textured layer (try the “Render Fibers” filter) for the cloth. Shadows are probably easiest to add by hand, but you could try an “emboss” on the combined result of the other two.

How accurate do you need to be? Enough to fool a kidnap victim’s family, or just a stylization? 🙂

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**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-need-to-photoshop-a-face-so-it-looks-like-its-pressing-against-fabric/516466/3 "2009-11-05T21:17:17Z")

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The problem is that you need to take the RGB data of the image of the face… and use that to create the heightmap which could then be applied to a texture. While there might be a way to approximate it (I’m by no means a Photoshop expert), I’d use [CrazyBump](http://www.crazybump.com/)to do it.

Crazybump builds bump maps out of regular photos, and a lot of my coworkers swear by it.