Blog Post: The Perfect Shatter in Photoshop

Create a Highly Realistic Shattered Glass or Mirror Effect in Photoshop

I had some old glass cabinet doors laying around and thought it would be a nice opportunity to create a few shattered textures. Hitting them with a hammer was fun. The cleanup, not so fun.

After shooting them, I created a custom displacement map and light overlay for my favorite image. Download the textures at the bottom of this page and follow these easy steps to create a detailed shattered glass or mirror effect!

1) Open Texturelabs_Glass_146XL.jpg and Save a Copy as a PSD.


2) Convert your target layer to a Smart Object in Photoshop (Layer > Smart Objects > Convert to Smart Object)


3) Use the Filter > Distort > Displace with both values at 250 and Stretch To Fit selected. Use the PSD created in Step 1 for the Displacement Map.


4) Drag Texturelabs_Glass_147XL.jpg into your Photoshop document and scale it to fill the image. Set the layer’s blending mode to Hard Light at 50% Opacity.

5) Drag Texturelabs_Glass_145XL.jpg into your Photoshop document and scale it to fill the image. Set the layer’s blending mode to Hard Light at 100% Opacity.



BEHIND THE SCENES



Download the textures here:

Glass 145 - Radial shatter

small: 960×960 jpg

medium: 1920×1920 jpg

large: 4240×4240 jpg

x large: 4920×4920 jpg

Glass 146 - Radial shatter displacement

small: 960×960 jpg

medium: 1920×1920 jpg

large: 4240×4240 jpg

x large: 4920×4920 jpg

Glass 147 - Radial shatter overlay

small: 960×960 jpg

medium: 1920×1920 jpg

large: 4240×4240 jpg

x large: 4921×4921 jpg