Embroidery effect not working with black?

[Abby30687992l522]

Hello! 

I bought a tool to help me make images look like they are embroidered. The taco image is the one that came with the file. When I separate the black into a new layer and control save, it successfully coverts the black to the embroidered look. However, when I upload my own image and do the same, it does nothing to the black. I have tried multiple images and they all do the same thing. I am a novice at photoshop so it could be something obvious but I cannot figure it out. 

Thank you in advance!

[Trevor.Dennis]

I'll have to guess without knowing what the Embroidery effect is doing, but a lot of effects will not work on full black and full white.  Try selecting the black object by Ctrl (Cmd) clicking its layer to select the cat, and fill the selection on a new layer with a charcoal tone.  Something like the RGB 40,40,40 below

Try the effect on that, and if it works, you'll need to work out how to create the eyes and whiskers (probably on a new layer) but we'll sort that out when you have the Embroidery effect working.

[Trevor.Dennis]

A demonstration of how some effects won't show on full bl;ack or full white.

The background is a black to white gradient

Above that I have used a Hue/Saturation layer set to Colorize > Red.

Note: I have masked out the left side so you can see the before and after.

You can see that full effect is only apprent above the 50% grey tone, becomming less and less apparent as it moves to full black and full white.

I suspect the the Embroidery effect uses Bevel & Emboss layer style, and if that's the case, it definitely wouldn't work on full black or white.

[Myra Ferguson]

The facial features where the effect is being applied appear to be dark gray and not black. If you look at the cat image after you go back to the original psd, it appears that the effect is being applied to the white of the eye circles. I can't see how the effect is set up, but it seems like it doesn't show up well if the color is solid black.

You could try making your cat a dark gray so that the effect is more prominent.