Michael Benjamin has done an excellent tutorial for displacement maps for the Full Photoshop, however some of the tools there are NOT available in Elements . So here is a simpler way to do a similar effect in Elements 8 (should also work in previous versions )

---

 

Start with a textured background  ... curtains work well too , anything with shaded areas and a bit of depth to it .....and remove the colour like so...enhance>Adjust Colour>Remove Colour....

you should get a black and white image ...then increase the contrast to 100% like so...Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast...

Sometimes you can add gaussian blur to dull the edges at this stage , in this case we will not .. Save file somewhere where you will know where to find the file , and save as a PSD file rather than a Jpeg....

 

Open up the original background texture file , so it is in the project bin at the bottom .. then open up the union jack file ...Copy the whole union jack image by using selct>All....

Then press the edit tab at the top and then copy .(you can now close the union jack image) ..

Make sure background texture image is visible and selected and then Edit (tab on the top next to file) and press paste .. you should get something like this ....

As you can see i have the move tool selected , and this will alow you to resize and move the flag to where you want it ..you will also see that the flag appears as a seperate layer in the layer's pallette..

Having moved the flag to how you want it (including rotated if you like) then you can apply the displacement map like so ..

With the flag layer selected go to Filter>Distort>Displace ...

then input the following settings...

Then Elements will ask you to choose a displacement map ...navigate to where you saved the Black and White PSD file you created earlier choose this...

this will be the reult (or similar depending on the size you chose etc!)....

Now this doesnt look very good , but bear in mind that the layer mode is set to normal and has 100% opacity (bottom right )....

To blend the layers to a degree , change the layer mode from normal to overlay...

and you should get a similar result to this ....

Now you can play about with the opacity and perhaps even trying diifferent layer modes ,multiply is quite interesting too.

If you like the result save the file as a PSD with the layers still intact and then you can play about later . Save as a Jpeg when you want to publish it here

Hope i have put every step down , if i haven't please advise and i will put it right .

 

Have fun and i hope this helps

Some other maps using the same method ...

 

Rich