How to Make a Realistic Flag in Adobe Photoshop

Wavy Flag

Love of country is a noble sentiment. And what better way to show that sentiment than by placing your national flag on your website for all to see? But who wants a plain two-dimensional flag, when you can have something better? This article will show you how to make a realistic-looking flag in Photoshop.

Instructions

1. 

   Get a public domain image of your country's flag. In the following tutorial, we will use a U.S. Flag, but any flag will work. Then resize the canvas to be about 30 percent larger than the image.

2. 

   Create another image that is the same size as your resized canvas. Then use the the "Rectangular Selection" tool and "Gradient" tool to create two side-by-side gradients. Use the blur tool to smooth things out. Save this file as a Photoshop document. Then select all and copy.

3. 

   Go back to the original image, and go to "Filter," "Distort" and click "Displace." Leave all the settings at default, but change the Horizontal to 0. In the dialog box that pops up, select the displacement map you saved.

4. 

   Go to "Channels." Click to add a channel at the bottom, and paste the displacement map into the channel. Select the image layer again. Then go to "Filters," "Render," and select "Lighting" and leave all the settings as they are, except for changing the texture to "Alpha 1," which is the displacement you pasted in. And there you have it; a waving flag you can be proud of.