Photoshop - CS4

Lesson 77: Liquify (1)

77/84 Lessons 

The “Liquify” window
With the  very powerful tool “Liquify”, we distort the pixels in an image.
The first thing we do is to open our picture.

What I then do is to make a duplicate (1) of the background layer where I can go and apply the filter. This makes it easier later to see the difference between the original and the liqified version.

Then I make a selection from the part where I will perform the changes. This will zoom the picture to the selected part in the liquify window .

The part I want to edit are the cheeks. Image1

Now click “Filter” in the menu bar and choose “Liquify” from the drop-down menu.
This opens the Liquify.
On the left we find the various tools (1).

On the right side, at the top, we find the tool options (2), the reconstruction options (3), the mask options (4) and the view options (5).Image2

Let us first consider the various tools. Let us see

On the top, we have the tool “Forward Warp” (1).

Among them we find the “Reconstruct” button (2).

The third button is the “Twirl Clockwise” (3).

Then we have the “Plucker” (4).

Then the “Bloat” (5).

Next the “Push Left” (6).

The “Mirror” (7).

The “Turbulence” (8).

And lastly the “Freeze Mask” (9) and “Thaw Mask ” (10) buttons.

Among them we find the “hand” and “Zoom” buttons, but you know what we can do with these by now.

Let me start by talking about the “Freeze Mask” (9) and “Thaw Mask” (10) and the corresponding options.

With the first button (9), we place a mask over the part of the photo that we do not want to edit.

In other words, we freeze that part of the image.

With the second (10), we erase the frozen parts away.

Now, for the mask options and view options.

At the top we have five buttons.

With the first “Replace selection” you give the selection, themask or transparency in the original image.

With the second “Add to Selection” you give the mask in the original image, so you can then expand the selection with the “Freeze Mask” tool. It adds selected pixels in the channel to the current frozen selection.

The third “Subtract from Selection”, we remove pixels from the current channel of the frozen selection.

The fourth “Intersect with selection”, is used only with selected pixels that are currently frozen.

And the last “Invert Selection” is used to transform the selected pixels in the current frozen selection.

I find all these as unnecessary buttons.

I personally would much rather work with the three buttons below.

“None”, “Mask All” and “Invert All”.

What the first two do, seems obvious to me.
What the third does is, it change the masked as unmasked and unmasked as masked.

Among them we find the “Display Options”.
In the first box we determine whether to show or hide the image.
You can change the “Opacity” only when the “Show Backdrop” option is checked. The “Show Backdrop” shows you the original version.
And it is only when the “Show image” option is selected, the “Show Mask” can be selected.
Below, we have the mask color. By default, this is red, but if you prefer another color, click the downward pointing arrow.

Many people do not use all these options, depending on how they prefer to work.
In the next lesson we will modify the photo slightly.

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