Creating Opitcal Illusions in Photoshop

First thanks to johnsadowski.com for the inspiration on the original tutorial. I've added many steps and illustrations to their tutorial to make this easier to follow for someone new to Photoshop.

1) select an image with a range of bright colors and open it in Photoshop.

2) Duplicate the layer with the image. You should now have only 2 layers in your layers in your layers pallet.

3) Select the bottom layer. Select Image —> Adjust —> Desaturate.

4) Pick a 50% grey from the color palette. Click on the foreground color to open the color picker and select half way between black and white.

5) Select the top layer. Select Edit —> Fill. And use the following settings. Use Foreground Color, Mode: Luminosity, Opacity 100%.

6) Select Image —> Adjust —> Invert.

7) Now create a new layer and draw a small dot filled with black. We need to center the dot, so follow these instructions to align the dot in the center.

8) Select your bottom layer (the desaturated one, then while holding down Ctrl on your keyboard, select the color layer (the one directly below the dot)

Link the two layers together by using the link button the bottom of the layers palette.

Select the move tool (V) and click the following alignment tools in the tools property bar at the top of the screen. Align vertical centers and Align horizontal centers.

9) Now we create the animation. If your animation palette is not already open, go to Window —> Animation. Create a new frame in the animation by clicking the new frame animation at the bottom of the animation frame

Now that we have the second frame selected, we need to change our layers so that only the black and white layer is visible. Click the eye next to the color layer in the layers palette.

We also need to adjust our timings, so pull down the time list below the frame. 5 sec and 2 sec seemed to work well here.

10) Save your image as a gif (File, Save for Web and Devices) Be sure it’s a gif as that’s the only image format that will save the animation. Stare at the dot and see how your optical illusion has turned out.

Here's our final illusion. Stare at the dot and you should see color on the black and white image until you move your eyes.