Reusable Video Glitch Effect in Adobe Photoshop - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Create a Reusable Video Glitch Effect in Photoshop - Introduction: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design for Lunch class, create a reusable video glitch effect in Adobe Photoshop. Graphic design for Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're going to look at creating a video glitch effect, and we're going to learn a few things about working with channels in Photoshop and also how to use displacement maps, or there's some really cool stuff that we're going to learn along the way to creating this great image. Now, as you're watching these videos, you will see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Actually, you're going to see it, if you're not using an app, if you're actually using a browser-based version of Skillshare. If you see it, if you're enjoying the class, please do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write in just a few words about why you're enjoying the class. These recommendations help other students at Skillshare to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question for me, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now let's get started creating a video glitch effect in Photoshop. 2. Pt 1 - Understanding Color Channels: Now, there's just a small thing that I want to look at before we get started on the video glitch effect because I think I might help you to understand a little bit about what's happening when we do this effect, and it all has to do with channels in Photoshop. Now, when you're working with a photo in Photoshop, it's an RGB color mode. That means it's made up of red and green and blue. When you add pure red, green,, and blue together, you get white. So these overlapping circles where they intersect in the very middle, we're seeing white, and here's pure blue. But notice that opposite pure blue is yellow, and opposite pure red is cyan, and opposite pure green is magenta. So the opposite color for red is cyan. If we destroy the red channel in some way, we're either going to get more red or more cyan. If we destroy or work on the green channel, then we're going to affect not only green in the image, but also potentially cyan. If we do the same with the blue channel and distort that channel somehow, then we're either going to get more blue, or we're going to get more yellow. So it's important to understand the relationship between these primary colors. Red, green and blue are your primary colors, and their opposites, cyan, magenta, and yellow. Let's now move and have a quick look at a photograph. This is the photograph that we're going to use for this video glitch effect. It's being displayed in RGB color mode, so the image is a combination of red, green, and blue. Now, we can say the contribution that red, green, and blue make to this image from the channel's palette, I'll choose Window and then Channels. Here's the RGB composite channel, and then we have individual red, green, and blue channels, and they control the red, green, and blue that goes to make up this image. Now, each of these channels is a bit different to the other channels because of the amount of red, green, and blue that goes to varying parts of the image, but you'll see that they're all overlaid on top of each other, the skater is not moving from one channel to the other. Well, the video glitch effect relies on moving one of these color channels a little bit offset. So what we can do is go, for example, to the red channel, and I'm going to choose "Select All" to select everything on the red channel of the move tool selected, and I'm just going to nudge this channel out of alignment with the other channels. Right now we're not seen anything different because we're just looking at the red channel, but if I go back up here and select the RGB color channel, the full image, you can see that something has happened to the photograph, and what's happened is that red and cyan have appeared on the edges of the skater, and in fact on the edges of everything in this image, because we've knocked the red channel out of alignment. Because I moved the image to the left, you can see that cyan is appearing on the left - hand side, for example, of the skater's leg, and red is appearing on the other side. If I went back to the red channel and I move it in the opposite direction, then the opposite is going to happen. Cyan is going start to appear here, and red will appear here. Let's go back to the RGB color channel. You can say that cyan's here and red's here. Now, this is the basis of the video glitch effect. What we're going to do is we're going to offset one of the channels in the image to start our effect, and then we're going to add a few extra bits into it as well, but this is the fundamental part of it. The problem is that if we want to create this effect as a re - usable effect very simply so that we can just drop any photograph into this effect and have the video glitch effect appear, then we can't use this process for offsetting channels because we're going to be using smart objects, and you can't break up the channels this way using smart objects. So we're going to have to find a different way of distorting our channels. But fundamentally, this is what we're going to be doing with a few added extras. 3. Pt 2 - Distort Using a Displacement Map: We're ready to go ahead now and create our video glitch effect. So I've opened up my image in Photoshop and I've given you the download link for this image. It's accessible from Unspliced.com. Now, before we get started on the video glitch effect itself, we need what's called a displacement map. We're going to use that to distort the image. To make a displacement map, I want an image the size of this one. So I'm going to choose file and then new. Now, if I'm not sure how big this image is, once I see the new dialog appear here, I can just click on window and then select my photo. When I do that, the width and height are automatically set for this new document, to the width and height of my photo. I want my background to be black, so I'm going to drop the list down here, click "Other" and just make sure that I have black selected, and I'll click "Okay". Then "Okay" again. I now have a document that has a black background that is exactly the same size as my photograph. So I am going to the brush tool and I want to select a brush to use. These are some of the default brushes that are shipped with Photoshop. It doesn't really matter too much what brush you use, but I'm using one of these that are like a series of dots. It's a splatter sort of brush. So I'm just selecting it and I'm going set it to a fairly large size. But you know what? It's way too small still. So I'm just going to use a square bracket to enlarge it. I'm painting with white. I have white set here. Of course, you can always select white by clicking on this icon here and then just flips the colors. I'm going to paint a few white dots in this image. I'm just clicking and clicking a few times to get down some good white paint. That's all I need to do at this stage. I'm going to convert this background layer to irregular layer by double-clicking on it and click "Okay". What I want to do is to create a spiral effect through this pattern here. So I'm going choose filter, distort, wave. For my wave filter, I want a sine wave. What I've said up here is I've got a wavelength that's fairly low at the minimum level and around the midway in the maximum level. My amplitude is wound all the way over to the right. You can see that the amplitude is having an effect on getting this zigzag effect. So you want to just experiment with amplitude just to get these shapes here to be zigzagging around. What's actually controlling a zigzag is this scale. So I've got the horizontal scale wound all the way up to 100. If the vertical scale were wound up to 100, you can see that the zigzag is going the other way. But we just want it to scale in one direction and I want it to be in a horizontal direction. So you can play around with these adjustments. All you want is something that will vaguely like this. You can have more or less of these lines across the image by just adjusting your wavelength. I want quite a few. You could even wind up your generators to three or four. You can just experiment with those values. But you're not going to go wrong with settings that are like this. A low number of generators, 1, 2, 3, wavelengths that are fairly close to each other. But in the bottom edge of these sliders, amplitude premier wound all the way up. Then for scale, making sure that you have horizontal set really high and vertical really low. I'll click "Okay". We're going to use this image for two things. We're going to use it as an overlay over the skater, but we're also going to use it to distort the skater, because there's a method in Photoshop where you can use a black and white image to distort another image. To do this, we're going to have to save this. I'm going to choose "File" and then "Save As". I've got a master images file here. I'm going to call this "Displacement Map", but you can call it anything you like. I'll click "Save". As I said, I want this for two purposes. One, I want it to add an effect over the skater, but secondly, I want to use it as a displacement map. So let's go into it as a placement bit of it first of all. Back in the skater image, I want to do a couple of things. Firstly, I want to turn the background layer into a regular layer by double-clicking on it and click "Okay". Then I want to convert it to a smart objects. So I'll right-click and choose "Convert to Smart Object". Now this is going to be our foundation image. So what we want do now is to distort it using our displacement map. To do this with the smart object layer selective, we'll choose filter, distort, displace. You can make some changes through the settings here, but it's pretty arbitrary right now because you don't even know what it's really going to do to the image. The defaults I think are 10 and 10, so I'm just winding mine up to 16 and 16. I've got "Stretch to Fit" selected, and I've got "Repeat Edge Pixel" selected, and I'll click "Okay". When I do that, Photoshop goes, "Wait a minute, you need to tell me what you want to use as your displacement map." So I'm going to select my PSD file that I just created as a displacement map and click "Okay". What has happened is that Photoshop has actually distorted this image along the lines that there were in the displacement map. So if we have a look at the displacement map, you can say that it's lots of curly lines. Well, those curly lines are now distorting this image inside Photoshop. So you can create a displacement map that is anything basically, and you can apply it to an image and it will be used to distort the image. Now, if you don't think the displacement is enough or it's too much, you can double-click on the display option here, and you can reset the horizontal scale. So let's take it up to 30 and click "Okay". But we'll have to re-select our image each time. You'll see now that I've got even greater displacement and fracturing of this image as a result of applying the displacement map to it. 4. Pt 3 - Distort a Color Channel: Now that we've distorted the image itself, it's time to look at distorting some of the color in the image. For this, we're going to knock one of these channels out of alignment. But we can't do it using the channels palette because we're just not able to do that with a smart object. Here's how we are going to do it. We're going to start firstly in the Layers palette. I'm going to drag and drop this in task Smart Object layer onto the New Layer icon. That's going to give me an exact duplicate of that distorted image. For this layer, what we're going to do is we're going to distort the layer a little bit, and then we're going to limit that distortion to a color channel. That's why we need a second copy of the image to do this with. With the layer selected, I'm going to choose Filter, Distort and the distortion effect I'm going to use is Shear. So I'm just going to click on "Shear". Now, this is the default setting for the shear filter, it should just be a line down the center of the image. But as soon as you have used the shear filter once in a session in Photoshop, then the default is going to be whatever it was last time you used it. As soon as we start using it, that's going to be this session's default. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to drag very slightly on this line. You can see that Photoshop's put a little marker here to mark where I've dragged out on the line. Now, you want to use less rather than more at this point. What I'm going to do is I'm actually going to make a small S curve in my shear here. I'm going to drag out to the right at the top and then grab my line and drag slightly out to the left at the bottom. But literally you can do whatever you like. But just be aware that less is going to be more because even a alignment like this, which is pretty small shear is going to result in quite a big shift in the colors. For the edge pixels, I'm just going to click here on "Repeat Edge Pixels" and then click "Okay". Now, you saw some distortion happen in the image as I clicked "Okay" and in fact, if I click this layer on and off, you'll see that there's some distortion here, quite a bit of distortion in actual fact. I'm going to turn the layer back on again. Right now the shear that we applied is being applied to the entire layer, all three channels where we want to apply it to just one channel. To do that with the layer selected, I'm going to click the "Fx icon and click "Blending Options". Because here in the blending options is an option to blend one, two or three channels. By default it's three channels because 99.999 percent of the time, that's what you want to blend. But today is different, today we want to blend using just one channel. You can select whichever channel you want to use, this is the red channel, this breaks out red and cyan. If we were to use the green channel, then we're going to break out green and magenta. If we use the blue channel, then we're going to break out blue and yellow because they're the opposite colors, so you can use whichever color combination you want. I just happen to like the red and cyan, and so that's what I'm going to use. But you can see how far these colors got knocked out with just a small adjustment in that shear filter. I'm going to click "Okay". If I want to at this point, I can go back to the shear filter by double-clicking on this. I can now adjust the amount of distortion I have in that channel. If I've done too much or too little, I can just bring the slide back here. I'm just going to grab hold of one of the little points that I had, I'm just going to adjust that and click "Okay". Then the image will readjust accordingly. Now, we've got a image distortion effect, we've got add distorted color, we're going to come back in the last video and just apply a couple of extra effects to the image. 5. Pt 4 - Reuse the Effect: At this stage, you might remember that we have this displacement map image sitting here. We used it as a displacement map to distort the image, but we also said we were going to use it to affect the image as well. Well, now's the time to go and get this image, choose "Select All" and then "Edit," "Copy." We're going back to add distorted skater image, and I'm going to choose "Edit", "Paste". Then just paste this displacement map image on top of the skater. Of course, because we use this image as a displacement map, these lines are going to follow the distortion in the image underneath. It's just that because it's a black and white image, right right we can't see anything through it. Well, we're just going to change the blend mode. On a PC, I'm just going to select a "Blend Mode" and then use the down arrow key to just run through the blend modes. If you're on a Mac, you're going to need to select the tool other than a paintbrush tool. Then you can use Shift plus and Shift minus to go through your blend modes. I've gone as far as lighten, which is one of the options that I could potentially use. Screen is another one. You could also use color dodge because that's also going to affect some of the colors in the image. At this point, you're just really looking for an effect that speaks to you. Just run down the options, and then when you get to the bottom on a PC, you can just head back up to one that you want to use. On a Mac, you can keep going round because they will cycle all the way around. I'm going to head up here to something like color dodge. I'm just going to drop down the opacity because it's far too much of an effect. I'm going to take my opacity all the way to zero and then just wind it up a little bit until I see something that is actually going to work for me. I'm using what are called scrubby sliders here. You can drop down this little arrow and adjust the slider, but you can also just drag on the word and that adjusts the slider by just dragging on the word. You see a little hand icon with little arrows on it. I'm going to take my opacity up to somewhere around about 30 percent. Now I'm going to finish this effect off with some noise, but I like to put my noise on in an editable layer because that just makes a whole lot more sense. I'm going to add a new solid gray filled layer to this image. I'll choose "Layer", "New Fill Layer", and then "Solid Color". I'll click "Okay". The solid color I want to use is mid gray and that's 128, 128, 128. Chances are you're probably won't be able to get it exact when you're just clicking and dragging here, but if you do, then that's fine. Otherwise, this come in here and type the values and click "Okay". The reason we use 128, 128, 128 is because it's neutral gray. When we apply a blend modes such as overlay, nothing changes in the underlying image. If I turn this layer on and off, nothing changes in the image, which allows me to use this layer to apply effects to the image underneath. What I'm going to do is I'm going to apply noise to this layer. I'm going to choose "Filter Noise", "Add Noise". I'm prompted that either I have to rasterize this layer or convert it to a smart object. I'm fine with just converting it to a smart object, so I'll do that now. At this point, you need to look and say what noise you want to add. You can add color noise by clicking off "Monochromatic", or you can add black and white noise by clicking "Monochromatic on". You can change between uniform and gaussian noise and just say how that affects your image, and you can also adjust the amount. Now I've added quite a bit of noise to this because it's a video glitch effect. Something's gone wrong with my video stream and I'm getting a noisy off color distorted image, and so I'm quite happy with a fair amount of noise here. It may also want to make it color noise, so I'm just going to select whatever speaks to me creatively and click "Okay". Now if you feel that the noise is too much and too obvious, then you can just back off the opacity on this layer. The other completed video, glitch effect. Now it's time to look and see how we could reuse this because what we want to do is to go ahead and save this file. Now I've already saved it, so it's got a name, so I'm just going to click to save it again. In future I could reopen this file, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to one of the smart object layers, right-click, and I'm going to choose edit contents. What that's going to do is open up the original image inside the smart object, and what I want to do is to place another image in here instead. I'm going to choose "File" and then "Place Embedded". I'm going to go and select a different image to use. Now this one's a little bit smaller, so I'm actually going to enlarge it, but making sure I hold the Shift key so that it is constrained to its original proportions. I'm just going to move it up so that the interesting part of the image is where I want it to be. At this point, I can go ahead and delete this layer. I'm just going to drag and drop it onto the delete icon here. Now I would simply save and close this file. Up here you can say I've got layer 0 pairs B. This is the smart object file and all I'm going to do is click it's close button and I'm going to be prompted to save the changes to it. I'm going to say "Yes". Photoshop has gone ahead and updated the smart objects. I've got two smart object layers here, they've both been updated to the new image and the top one has had the displacement map applied to it and also the shear, the bottom one has just had the displacement map applied to it. Now, at this point, if we said, "Well, this is really cute, but what happens if we really want, say blue and yellow in this image distorted instead of blue and red?" Well, we'll go to this little icon here and double-click it, and that opens up to the blend options. For blue and yellow, we need to go and get the blue channel. Here's the blue and yellow distortion applied to the image. It's simply a case of changing the channel selector here and click "Okay". Because this is also the shear layer, if we thought that the shear was too much, then we can just double-click on the shear here to reopen the sheer panel, and we can change how the shear is being applied. I could bring it in to be a little bit less, for example, with this image, or I could move it just totally over one side so it doesn't actually do a S-curve through the image and click "Okay". There's plenty of option here to not only use a different image for this effect, but also to change the shear effect, but also the color channel that you're using. You could also turn off this overlay layer and you could also adjust the noise layer should you wish to. There is our video glitch effect created in Photoshop. Your project for this class is going to be to go ahead and create your own video glitch effect with some distortion in it created using a displacement map. Post an image of your glitched photograph in the class project area. I hope that you've enjoyed this class and that you've learned some things about channels, and colors, and displacement maps in Photoshop. If you did enjoy the class and when you see a prompt, give it a recommendation, please do two things for me. Firstly, give it a thumbs up and secondly, write just a few words about why you enjoyed this class. These recommendations will help other students to see that this is a class that they too might enjoy. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question for me, please do so. I read and I respond to all of your comments and questions and I look at and I respond to all of your class projects. My name is Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.