What you’ve taken away from this tutorial should be: grayscale images can map effects to corresponding images. It is precisely because you used the same image for displacement and for toning that the areas lined up and the result was dramatic and dimensional.

You’re also not limited to flags as your new repertoire. The visual effect of a cloth blowing in the breeze can also be used for drawing drapes, and making a perfect patterned background for a different group of shapes:

Figure 9

Don’t forget to check out the over two dozen other maps that Image Skill Displacement filter ships with, and if you want more wafting cloth examples, click the link to download TheMapRoom.zip, five more 800 x 600 pixel grayscales I created for your use, personal and commercial.

Now, you’ll never be short of “the folding stuff” during the week!

Discuss this tutorial and show the work it inspired in the Xara Xone forum on TalkGraphics.com