If you register for free, you will be able to post threads, vote on polls and lots more. If you have problems with the registration or logging in, please contact the administrator.
Since he points to the folder but not a specific file, I would assume that he means to try any and all of them.
Time to step on Mark's toes. I took a quit peek at the stock D-Maps. Personally, I don't think they fit well with the tutorial. Either too sharp or too contrived (contrived in a manner best left for other things).
Blech! Let's make our own. A Stroker variation on a golden oldie.
Start a new document, around 300x300.
Hit 'd' to get the default black and white colours.
Go to the Channels palette.
In the Red channel, run Clouds/Difference Clouds to taste.
In the Green channel, run Clouds/Difference Clouds to taste.
Blue channel is up in the air. I like to fill mine with 50% gray.
Go back to the composite RGB channel.
You should now have a bunch of pretty colours. Ohh... ahh...
From here, you have a lot of options. You can run a myriad of filters to jazz it up. Feel free to experiment.
For the BG FX tutorial, I recommend some Gaussian Blur. This will give the D-Map a smooth, wavy, watery kind of feel to the distortion. I think this fits well with the tutorial.
Save it as a PSD and use it as a D-Map when you run Displace.
That's how I would go about it. 3[
Now, way back when, I did go through the BG FX tutorial. It's one of the few tutorials that I actually did. When I went through it all those years ago, I left out the Displace step. Came out fine for me.
It's been a long time since I've been through it, so I thought I would give it a quick fiddle.
Skipped the Wave step.
Didn't mask it in any manner. Although, I did do some masking fiddles and it looked pretty wicked, but I decided to leave it out.
Just a gradient and a basic Displace technique.
Even threw in my nick just for kicks, but the perspective needs to be fixed.
In all fairnness though... that tute was written back in '97. For PS4 i believe. The amount of default dMaps was less than now, and they're located in a different place now too. Guess i should change that in the tute huh? ;\
And no worries about the toes man... they're just fine.
Has it been 6 years already? Man, now I'm getting nostalgic.
Back then, only 3 PS things worth reading:
1. Doc Ozone's Hands-On
2. Mark's tutorials
3. Kai's Power Tips
And one of the best resources was PhotoShop Compendium. That place kicked serious konkey dong. I almost cried when it went bye-bye.
No EyeCandy or Layer Styles just yet. Both made drop shadows and embossing a one-button trendwhore effect. Not to mention EC's Fire.
Back then, just to be different, I was using some of EC's filters in a lateral manner. One of my favorites was to use Fire as a Layer Mask instead of just plain ol' fire.
Kids. Gotta go.
When I get the time, I'll right a quickie for the D-Map I used for Forum Tutorials.
Background FX Tutorial 
Linear Mode
