Chapter 19: Distorting Images 639 The Liquify Filter Although the Liquify filter can be used for creating textures, giving tummy tucks, or several other serious Photoshop tasks, I predict that you’ll be laughing too hard to get much serious work done. The Liquify filter is so versatile that it almost qualifies as an application all on its own. It’s certainly more than just a tool. When you select the Liquify filter by choosing Filter ➪ Liquify, your image is opened inside the Liquify utility, as shown in Figure 19.21. Right away you can see that you can do so much here. I break each area in the utility into manageable chunks and introduce them one at a time. The Liquify utility works in a very similar way to the Puppet Warp. A mesh overlay is placed over your image, creating a grid that can be pulled and warped to change your image as if it were made of fabric. Each tool uses the mesh in a different way to create a different effect. The Reconstruct tools also are based on the mesh. The Liquify tools The Liquify tools are stacked neatly in their own Toolbox on the left of the Liquify utility. Some will be familiar to you, namely the Hand tool and the Zoom tool. Others are unique to the Liquify utility. These tools are listed here in the order in which they appear in the Toolbox. Note While you are in the Liquify workspace, each of these tools can be accessed by a hotkey. Hover over each tool to see its name and hotkey. n l Forward Warp: The Forward Warp tool drags the pixels starting at the center of your cursor forward following the direction you drag. The effects look just like the wake of a boat. This is a very basic way to push pixels around and can create very specific results, as seen in Figure 19.22. l Reconstruct: The Reconstruct tool is a simple way to restore specific areas of your image. Brush over areas that you’ve already distorted, and they are restored to their original pixel composition. Tip Holding down the Alt/Option key while either the Forward Warp tool or the Reconstruct tool is activated tem- porarily changes it to the other of these two tools. n l Twirl Clockwise: Using the Twirl Clockwise tool is like a curling iron for your pixels. Hold down your mouse button to twirl them around your cursor. Be sure to hold your mouse in one spot to do this; the longer you hold, the tighter the twirl is. If you want the twirl to go counter-clockwise, hold down the Alt/Option key while you twirl. 28_584743-ch19.indd 63928_584743-ch19.indd 639 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM Part VI: Artistic Effects 640 FIGURE 19.21 The Liquify utility in Photoshop Bloat Pucker Twirl Clockwise Reconstruct Forward Warp Push Left Mirror Turbulence Freeze Mask Thaw Mask 28_584743-ch19.indd 64028_584743-ch19.indd 640 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM Chapter 19: Distorting Images 641 FIGURE 19.22 The effects of the first four Liquify tools (not including the Reconstruct tool) PuckerBloatForward Warp Twirl l Pucker: Using the Pucker tool is like having a mini black hole in the center of your cur- sor; the longer you hold down your mouse button, the more pixels are sucked into the center of your cursor. It creates a pinched or puckered look. Great for hips and thighs. l Bloat: This tool has the opposite effect of the Pucker tool, pushing pixels out from the center of your cursor. Great for lips and cheeks. Holding down the Alt/Option key with the Pucker and Bloat tools changes one tool into the other. l Push left: This is another great tool for getting rid of bulges. Dragging this tool upward literally pushes the pixels the width of the brush to the left, blending the pixels to the right into the space left behind. This has a dramatic effect on hard lines, as demonstrated in Figure 19.23. Despite its name, you can push pixels right as well as left by dragging downward, pushing them up by dragging to the right and down by dragging left. Holding the down Alt/Option key reverses any one of these effects. 28_584743-ch19.indd 64128_584743-ch19.indd 641 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM Part VI: Artistic Effects 642 FIGURE 19.23 The effects of the next three Liquify tools Push Left Mirror Turbulence l Mirror: This effect is great for creating reflections or just really cool special effects, as shown in Figure 19.23. You can drag left to mirror the pixels under your cursor, right for the pixels above, down for the pixels to the right, and up for the pixels to the left. Don’t worry. Doing it makes more sense than reading about it; you’ll get the hang of it. The first brushstroke sets the conjunction point, and as long as subsequent strokes overlap each other (and go in the same direction), the first mirror effect is perpetuated. After you create an independent stroke, a new mirror effect is created. l Turbulence: Turbulence randomly scrambles the pixels within the cursor. You can move the cursor around your image for an effect that is similar—although not as precise—as the Forward Warp, or you can hold it in place to swirl the pixels randomly and eventually create a “burnt” area. l The Mask tools: These tools help you protect areas of your image that you don’t want to be liquefied. You can mask areas before or after you’ve used an effect on it, and the Mask tool won’t change the effect. It just protects that area from further changes. Click the Freeze Mask tool, and use the brush to paint over areas you want protected. The Thaw Mask tool “liquifies” the areas again so they can be changed. 28_584743-ch19.indd 64228_584743-ch19.indd 642 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM Chapter 19: Distorting Images 643 Tool options The tool options modify the behavior of the brush used to apply the Liquify effects. They are basic brush settings and should be familiar to you if you’ve used Photoshop at all: l Brush Size: This option changes the size of your brush and, therefore, the size of the effect that is being applied. The brush used to twirl curls in Figure 19.22 was much smaller than the brush used to make the broad mirror strokes in Figure 19.23. l Brush Density: This option sets the amount of distortion that takes place the farther the pixels are from the cursor. If you set your brush to a density of 100, the effects are the same at the edges of the cursor as they are in the center. l Brush Pressure: Use this setting to determine how fast the distortions are applied. If you want to apply settings slowly and carefully, lower the brush pressure. l Brush Rate: This option works with the tools that are applied over time as you hold the mouse in place with the button pressed, such as the Twirl and Turbulence tools. It deter- mines the speed that these effects are applied in this way. l Turbulent Jitter: The Turbulence tool scrambles your pixels, and the Turbulence Jitter setting determines how widely they are scrambled. A lower jitter scrambles pixels in a smaller area, avoiding the burnt look, but not creating a dramatic effect. A larger jitter scrambles pixels every which way inside your cursor. Mesh options You can save meshes, just as you would save selections, to use later. The mesh is what is placed over your image and changes as you use the Liquify tools to warp and distort your image. By sav- ing the mesh, you are really saving the Liquify settings that you have applied to your document. These settings are actually saved as an independent file and can be opened even if you have a com- pletely different image in the Liquify utility. At the top of the options panel, click Save Mesh to save your current liquify status. You can browse and save the document independently of the image, just as if you were saving a new document in Photoshop. Make sure you choose a location where you can easily locate it later. To load a saved mesh, click the Load Mesh button and browse to the location of the mesh file. It is loaded into the Liquify utility and takes effect on the current image immediately, replacing the mesh that was pre- viously there. Reconstruct options When you are having fun with Liquify, it’s easy to go overboard. The Reconstruct option that you’ll probably use the most is the Restore All button. Simply click this button to restore your image to the one that you opened. The Reconstruct options are a little more complicated. They don’t restore your image completely; each one works with a different algorithm to reconstruct certain aspects of your image and lessen the effects of any distortion you applied to it. The Reconstruct options work using the mesh, and the results you get are affected by any Freeze Masks you place over either areas of distortion or even areas where a distorted object used to be. 28_584743-ch19.indd 64328_584743-ch19.indd 643 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM Part VI: Artistic Effects 644 Figure 19.24 shows examples of these Reconstruct modes: FIGURE 19.24 Each of these images represents the reconstruction mode applied once. Revert Smooth Rigid Loose Before reconstruction Stiff l Revert: This mode reverses the effects of the distortion uniformly and a little at a time. Areas that are masked are not affected. l Rigid: This mode restores the right angles in the mesh, removing distortions that twist the mesh past those right angles. In Figure 19.24, you can see that the results are a more rec- ognizable and jagged image. l Stiff: This mode reconstructs your image with only two or three clicks, but if you have any distorted areas frozen, the borders feather into the areas that have been reconstructed rather than creating a hard line between the masked and unmasked areas. 28_584743-ch19.indd 64428_584743-ch19.indd 644 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM Chapter 19: Distorting Images 645 l Smooth: This mode works best if the frozen areas are distorted differently than the unfro- zen areas, after you have used another Reconstruct mode, for instance. Smooth copies the distortion effects of the frozen areas and propagates them through the unfrozen areas. l Loose: This effect is similar to the Smooth mode, but it creates more continuity. Note All the reconstruction modes have cumulative effects, meaning that you can continue to click the Reconstruct button in any mode to achieve a bigger result. You also can choose another Reconstruct mode and layer it on top of any other reconstructions you’ve already applied. n Mask options The mask options in the Liquify utility change the way masks interact with one another. Using the drop-down menu that appears when you click any mask option, you can create or modify an exist- ing Freeze Mask with any selections, transparencies, layer masks, or alpha channels already present in your image. These options look similar to the options that modify your selections, but if you are used to the way the selection options work to change your selections, these options are going to confuse you, because they do not work the same way at all. In fact, they don’t even work consistently with each other. For instance, the Replace Selection option adds a mask over the element you choose from the drop-down menu (Transparency, for instance), but every other option ignores the mask and uses the unmasked area as the selection. On top of that, all these options treat masks created by the Freeze Mask tool as selected areas, so when you add a transparency to a Freeze Mask, it looks more like an intersection. So, if you are using two different alpha channels from the drop-down menu, the mask options work just the way you think they are going to, but using these options with the Freeze Mask tool is confusing. Instead of giving you a list of what the mask options should do, I provide you with an image of what they really do. In Figure 19.25, I created a Freeze Mask that runs through the flower and the transparency. As I clicked each mask option, I selected transparency from the drop-down menu. Note In order to use a selection from the drop-down menu, you need to create a selection in the original document, save the selection using the Select menu, and then deselect the image before opening it in Liquify. If your image contains an active selection when you open it in Liquify, you can liquify only the selected area. n The three buttons at the bottom of the mask options are much more straightforward: l None: This removes any freeze mask placed over the image. l Mask All: This creates a mask that covers the entire image. l Invert All: This changes masked areas into unmasked areas, and vice versa. 28_584743-ch19.indd 64528_584743-ch19.indd 645 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM . Despite its name, you can push pixels right as well as left by dragging downward, pushing them up by dragging to the right and down by dragging left. Holding the down Alt/Option key reverses. twirl. 28_584743-ch19.indd 63928_584743-ch19.indd 639 5/3/10 1:03 PM5/3/10 1:03 PM Part VI: Artistic Effects 640 FIGURE 19.21 The Liquify utility in Photoshop Bloat Pucker Twirl Clockwise Reconstruct Forward Warp Push. in the Toolbox. Note While you are in the Liquify workspace, each of these tools can be accessed by a hotkey. Hover over each tool to see its name and hotkey. n l Forward Warp: The Forward Warp