MJW

Ego Eram Reputo's method is certainly a good one, but there is a fairly easy way of using Creative Text Pro while still preserving the original color. It does require an additional plugin, Split Color and Brightness. The method is: Duplicate the layer. Set the top layer's blend mode to Multiply. Apply Split Color and Brightness with its default settings (Display = Color, Blending Mode = Multiply) to the top layer. Run Creative Text Pro on the lower layer. Merge the two layers.

I think it's because all the shading on the object is provided by Creative Text Pro, which includes the color. The last tab allows for Color Adjustment, so that may do what you want. Other tricks include copying the original flat-colored version to another layer, and using blend modes (such as Multiply) to combine the colored version with the shaded version.

I probably should have mentioned the various options in my comment. Other useful options besides Invert are the choice between using the map's alpha or gray, and the blending method. The Multiply and Minimum methods allow the alpha map to be applied to a layer that already has areas of transparency which shouldn't be replaced by the map's values.

There are two plugins that do that in BoltBait's plugin pack, Apply Mask and Paste Alpha. Apply Alpha Mask uses a map from another layer; Paste Alpha uses a map from the clipboard. UPDATE: I corrected the name of the first plugin, which is Apply Mask, not Apply Alpha Mask, as I originally typed.

I suggest also trying BoltBait's Creative Text Pro. It's been more or less replaced by Text Fun Factory, but it has a valuable feature that seems to be absent from new version. In the first tab there's a checkbox called Apply to existing object instead of text which allows all the neat text shading effects to be applied to objects. You'd probably have to reshade both the text and non-text to get a consistent look, but I think you could get something close to the original, and perhaps even fancier..

I don't think that's the image saramello (the OP) is concerned with. I think s/he wants to transform one of the small images in the head post to be like the other (or something like that). Tactilis just introduced that map image to show what the original two height map images represented. I doubt the second small image is a normal height map, so I'm not sure it can be done without a lot of effort. UPDATE: Perhaps I'm just confused about what you're doing or demonstrating, Ego Eram Reputo. If you're using a blown-up version of the second small image to modify the map in the way the OP wants to do, I'd say that's very sensible, though it would seem to depend on the blurriness resulting from greatly magnifying the second height-map image. Actually, this whole thread leaves me rather confused.

Sure, but what are the images supposed to show about the relationship between the height mapping methods? UPDATE: If, by chance, the first is the black and white version, and the second is the other version, the problem appears to go beyond remapping the colors. In the mountainous region of the second image, there are dark specks of color scattered upon a white background. That would seem to make no sense for a true height map, which should be relatively continuous. Maybe the non-white dots represent points where the height has been sampled; but in any case, I don't believe it's just a matter of remapping colors.

Seems to me you probably need to describe more precisely the transformation you want to make. Doesn't seem to me it's just changing one color scheme match another, whatever exactly that means. UPDATE: To perhaps be clearer, it's relatively easy to guess how a black and white image represents height, but without knowing how the other format represents height, it's difficult to know how to transform one to the other. Also, I'm not sure what those unlabeled images are supposed to show.

There's my plugin, Recolor Using Palette.

Good idea.

You need to do that using a different layer. Layers provide a consistent way of handling that sort of thing, rather than having a myriad of ad-hoc solutions. There are likely plugins to flip the contents of rectangular selections.

EDITED: Sorry. This was an attempt to edit the above comment. Instead, I must have accidentally replied to it. My excuse is I was working on something else at the time, and unlike most people, I can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

Gaussian blurs are more or less the standard blur, and most likely the one people have in mind when they talk about blurring, without any other qualification. True Blur is Ed Havey's attempt to produce an improved version of Gaussian Blur. Keep in mind that the built-in Gaussian Blur has been improved since True Blur was written, so it may include many of True Blur's features. For instance, the current Gaussian Blur allows fractional radii, while the original did not.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I believe that's what the Bokeh Blur does. In a simpler form (without the gamma adjustments), it was previously caller Unfocus, or something like that.

Antialiasing for Magic Wand selections would be very desirable. Unfortunately, the Magic Mand only selects whole pixels, as Rick Brewster explained in a 2017 comment.

A variation I'd suggest trying is to use the Texture Shader's Reflection Map (Equirectangular) Clipboard Image Mapping Method, with an equirectangular map in the clipboard. There are lots of equirectangular maps available, such as on the Equirectangular Flickr Group. I demonstrated a variation on this tutorial more years ago than I like to think about. The advantage of equirectangular maps over other methods of doing reflections is they never need resizing to map onto the image, because they represent the complete environment -- essentially a huge sphere surrounding the object. (That's the reason I added the shading mode in the first place. In fact, I think it may have been this tutorial that inspired me to add it.)

From my long-ago days of using PaintShop Pro, I recall a number of uses for modifying selections, such as expanding or contracting by a pixel or so, or -- a favorite of mine -- smoothing the selection boundary.

If I understand what you hope to do, I think it would be difficult. I don't see a good way to transform a single image into one that looks like a long-exposure photo. In a real long-exposure photo, moving objects leave trails of different lengths and directions, depending on their motion. That seems like it would be hard to duplicate.

If the goal is to essentially replace the black in colors with transparency, there are several plugins that will do that, including my Color Clearer. If you want to do something more complex, you'll need to describe what you want in more detail.

If I correctly understand what you're trying to do (which I may not), copy one image to the clipboard, then paste it as a new layer into the other image. Set the Opacity of the top layer to 127. Merge the layers. (The average color will be very slightly off, since 255 isn't evenly divisible by 2.)

Congratulations to, and appreciation for, @Pixey and @lynxster4! Not sure why i couldn't come up with an entry.

I assume you just have the JPEG versions. If it weren't for the JPEG anomalies, I think it might be mostly readable. Especially if you follow Pixey's advice to get copies the blank forms so you know what to expect. It's none of my business, but I do wonder how you ended up with these sorts of photos, but not the to actual documents. It brings to mind scenes from the old 1960s spy shows, where the agent is furtively snapping pictures of the Top Secret documents with a tiny camera.

Plugins can now officially write outside the selection, though I believe that's limited to the two new-fangled varieties, not the "classic" plugin we know and love. Fortunately, one of the new style of plugins can do the things the old-style plugins can do. So far though, unless I somehow missed it, plugins still can't change the selection. You can write a modified selection to the clipboard, then load it with Paste Selection, but obviously that's a bit awkward and inflexible.

I don't think you're the one who's missing something.