From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

894 Applying a freeform Warp to a Smart Object

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

894 Applying a freeform Warp to a Smart Object

- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to apply a free form warp inside Photoshop 2020 and moving forward to an indestructible smart object. And the advantage of working this way is that you can apply the effect dynamically. Meaning that you can adjust the warp settings anytime you like. And so for example, notice over here in the Layers panel that the thumbnail for this layer includes a little page icon in its bottom right corner and that tells us that we've taken the image and placed it inside of a smart object. Which means if I were to zoom out a little bit and then go up to the Edit menu and choose Free Transform or you can just press Ctrl+T or command+T on the Mac or you can drop down to the transform popup menu and you can choose Warp. And if you do the latter then you're going to see your warp points. Meaning that I can now click on any one of these points and modify its behavior like so. And then when I'm done, I can just press the enter key or the return key on the Mac in order to accept that change. Now the downside is that the file size on disk is going to be much, much larger. This file, for example, is about 150 megs, whereas the original flat JPEG file is just 17 megs. So in other words, the file with the smart object is about nine times as large. But still you get a big bang for your megabyte. So let me show you how it works. I'm going to start with the original JPEG image. This is that multi-image panorama that I stitched together inside Photoshop. I'll go ahead and double click on the flat background here inside the Layers panel and I'll go ahead and call this guy Ushuaia, which is the name of the city in Argentina. And I'll click okay and we end up with a floating layer. Now assuming that your rectangular Marquee Tool is selected up here at the top of the toolbox, you can just right click anywhere inside the image window and choose Convert to Smart Object and that will place the image inside of an indestructible smart object as indicated by this little page icon in the bottom right corner of the thumbnail. All right, now from this point on, anything we do to the image is going to be a dynamic modification. So for example, let's say I want to squish the image horizontally so that the mountains aren't so stretched looking. Then I can go up to the Image menu and choose the Image Size command. Then notice that the Resample checkbox is turned on. I have got the interpolation method set to Bicubic smooth gradients and the width and height values are not linked into agreement with each other, which means with the unit of measure set to pixels, I can go ahead and change this first value to 3920 and then I'll change the second value to 2520 and the reason I came up with these particular values is because they work well inside of our video. Then I'll click okay and that goes ahead and squishes the image as we're seeing right here. And if you want to see to what degree the squishes occurred, then you would go up to the Edit menu and choose Free Transform. Again, keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T here in the PC or command+T on the Mac. And then look up here in the options bar. The width has been scaled to 60.71% and the height has been scaled to 8246. And so you can change those values as you like. But what I really want to do is warp this image. So I'll click on the warp icon up here in the options bar. Or if you prefer, you can right click inside the image window and choose Warp and that will take you to the warp mode. Now at this point, we're not seeing any splits. We can create splits if you want to grid the effect, which is a good idea by clicking on any one of these options right here, or just press and hold the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac to create both a horizontal and vertical split at the same time. And I'll go ahead and create one right here. Let's say I still have the Alt or Option key down. And so I'm going to click right here, slightly above this building. And then I want to create another split, both a horizontal and vertical one at this position right here. So notice I still have the Alt or Option key down as I'm setting these points into place. And then I'll hover my cursor over one of the vertical guides. This guy right here above the mountains and that will allow me to create a horizontal split as we're seeing right here. All right, those are the splits I need. So I'll just go ahead and release the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and then I'll go ahead and zoom out and I will Shift+Marquee these top points. And so remember, you have to have the shift key down in order to select multiple points at a time. All right, now let's say I also want to select this next row down. I just go ahead and Shift+Marquee those points as well and now I can drag any one of them upward in order to create a custom stretch between the selected rows and the stationary rows below. All right, now I'm going to click off the points to deselect them and I'll Shift+Marquee these guys as well as this top row. So you can see the top rows is selected. These two points above the mountains are selected as well, and now I'll drag these guys upward in order to create a custom stretch. All right, now I'm going to click off the points to deselect them. I'll go ahead and not drag. Drag doesn't work. You can't drag a Marquee. You have to press the shift key and drag in order to Marquee a bunch of points like so. And I'll go ahead and drag these guys outward. And the reason I'm doing this is I don't want to reveal any transparency. And so notice if I grabbed this point and dragged it in, we can see this checkerboard pattern in the background. That's no good. And so I'll just go ahead and drag this guy outward like so. And then I'm going to Shift+Marquee these points down here at the bottom and that went ahead and deselected that previously selected point. And so you just have to watch out for which points are selected and which ones are not. And now I'll go ahead and click off the points to deselect them and Shift+Marquee this next row right here. And I'm going to drag it out. Notice I can scale this little Marquee by dragging on its little edge. And so you can scale a row horizontally or if I clicked off the points and Shift drag up like so to select an entire column, I could scale column vertically if I so desired. All right, so you can see that I've at least covered the canvas with this image. I'm going to click off the points to deselect them and Shift drag to Marquee these two points right here and I'll go ahead and drag these down. I could drag this one down as well. You just have to watch for stretching just as you do when applying the liquefy command incidentally. The difference is that instead of brushing in your modifications, you're dragging points on a grid. I want this horizon line to be a little flatter than it currently is and so I'll go ahead and drag that point down and I might drag this handle as well to apply still more modifications. I'll go ahead and drag this guy out just a little bit and this guy as well, so I'm not exposing any blank canvas in the background. And let's say I like what I see. I'll just go ahead and press the enter key or the return key on the Mac in order to apply that change. But what if you don't like what you see? Maybe you come back to this image a couple of days later and you decide, you know this horizon line really still isn't all that straight, it's kind of wavy now. Well, then all you have to do is press Ctrl+T or command+T on the Mac to enter the Free Transform mode. Go ahead and click on that warp icon up here in the options bar. That's the way I prefer to work and you'll see all of your original modifications at which point you can edit the points as well as the handles, as much as you like. And then when you're done, once again, press the enter key or the return key on the Mac to apply that change. And now just go ahead and press Shift+F in order to switch to the full screen mode and I'll zoom on in as well. And just for the sake of comparison, this is the original stretch looking version of the Panorama, and this is how it looks now with these bold mountains over here on the right hand side and this dramatic looking sky. Thanks to our ability to apply free form warp enhancements to an always dynamic smart object here inside Photoshop 2020 and moving forward.

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