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I am interested in how to achieve this coffee cream/powder effect using Photoshop.

I have spent quite some time trying to figure this out, but wasn't successful. Using a clipping mask to apply texture works on very simple logos or text, but not on photos or anything that requires detail.

enter image description here

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    Just a greyscale photo tinted then set to multiply and opacity reduced a little. All the texture is from the cup photo simply showing through the overlaid portrait.
    – Scott
    Jun 25, 2014 at 19:04
  • This question was marked as duplicate but it's actually different from the one linked, so I've reopened it.
    – Yisela
    Jun 26, 2014 at 5:26
  • No effects are needed. There are commercial coffee printers available for this purpose. just feed the photo via a smartphone application or stand in front of the coffee machine's camera. Make a web search for coffee-, capuccino- and latte printers. There are so many that I do not believe they all are bad jokes. Unfortunately I haven't seen one. Here are no coffee automates.
    – user82991
    Oct 13, 2019 at 11:57
  • The post is 5 years old, so there is a chance coffee printers were not "that common".
    – Rafael
    Oct 13, 2019 at 16:58

1 Answer 1

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"You're thinking about this," as they say, "the wrong way."

This isn't created by applying a texture to the photograph of the people, but by overlaying the photograph on an already-existing texture (the cappuccino).

The entry-level method is to place the photo on a layer above the coffee, change its Blend Mode to Luminosity and lower the opacity a bit, then mask out the parts that don't belong.

This can be finessed in different ways to better "sell" the effect.

  • Better color can be achieved with a Black-and-White conversion of the photograph, toned to a coffee hue and applied in Overlay, Color Burn, Darken or Multiply mode.

  • Surface Blur applied to the photograph would help give it a more "drawn on the surface" look.

  • A displacement mask created from the coffee image, applied to the photograph using Filter > Distort > Displace... could be used to modify the photo so it distorts to conform to the texture of the coffee.

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