Confused about CC glass

[Evelyn___]

CC glass bases height on luminance values. Brighter pixels represent higher points, while darker pixels represent lower points. However, I'm curious if you have a text layer and put a cc glass effect on it and the bump map is set to the text layer with a blue fill color, how is it basing off the height? 

[David Arbor · Accepted solution]

Your blue text still has a luminance value; color can't exist without some luminance, otherwise you would see black. Check out this little screen recording to see what I mean–in the color picker, switch from adjusting Hue to Brightness and you'll see how that value affects the displacement.

[Evelyn___]

Thank you so much for the reply! Now I understand why there was a bump math to begin with! Could I ask why there are holes inside the letters when the color is brighter? Is it to express higher elevation? 

[David Arbor]

You're welcome! With displacement, you can always push things too far, and I suspect, given the settings and the size of the text, I simply pushed the displacement more than the text could handle. But hey, maybe you want to create this effect intentionally, it is kind of cool looking 🙂