From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Advanced

Introducing the Liquify filter - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Advanced

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Introducing the Liquify filter

- [Voiceover] In this movie, I'll introduce you to the liquify filter. And I'll show you how to best approach things now that you can apply liquify as an editable smart filter, which allows you to change your mind, any time you like. And along the way, we're going to take this fairly obvious candidate, and we're going to turn him into this more studly humanoid here. Alright so, the first step is to convert this guy into a smart object by double-clicking on a background, in order to bring up the new layer dialog box, and I'll call this layer "Man", and press the enter key, or the return key on a Mac. Then, armed with the rectangular marquee tool, which of course you can get by pressing the M key, go ahead and right click inside the image window, and choose "Convert to Smart Object". Next you want to go up to the Filter menu and choose the Liquify command, or you have a keyboard shortcut of Control Shift X, or Command Shift X on a Mac, which doesn't have anything to do with the word liquify, but ultimately gets you were you want to go. Either way, that's going to bring up the liquify window, which behaves like an independent utility, which just happens to work inside Photoshop, complete with its own set of tools over here on the left hand side of the window, and a bunch of expandable options over here on the right hand side. And so, notice by default you are working with a tool called the Forward Warp Tool, which most people just call the Warp Tool, because, after all, there is no such thing as a backward warp tool, and the tool has a keyboard shortcut of W for Warp. And so I'm going to go ahead and zoom in, which you can do just by pressing Control +, or if you want to zoom out you press Control -. If you want to zoom in using the tool, you just have to press and hold the Control key, or the Command key on a Mac, and click as you're seeing me do now. Now notice if I drag with this tool, I am going to warp the image. And I'm actually warping with a brush, as opposed to any other warping technique inside Photoshop. And you can think of it as some kind of smudge tool, which doesn't smear the pixels. It actually moves them around, as we're seeing here. Now you can also increase the size of you brush, by pressing the right bracket key, or decrease it's size by pressing the left bracket key. If you want to increase or decrease the size of the brush more quickly, then you press and hold the key. So that's the result of pressing and holding the right bracket key. This is the result of pressing and holding the left bracket key. At which point, you can see, that I'm going to warp a larger area. Now, I don't really want any of these modifications, so I'll just click the "Restore All" button, down here near the bottom of the window, in order to get rid of all my changes. Notice you also have pressure and density settings. So at a pressure of 100%, you're going to move a lot of pixels at once. If I were to take this value down to, let's say, 50%, and drag you can see that I'm moving fewer pixels at a time, so I'm making a lot less of a difference. Notice that each of these options have pretty good tool tips. Pressure, for example, changes the brush distortion strength, which is exactly right. Compare that to Density, which changes the brush edge strength. And let me show you what that looks like. I'll go ahead and restore the pressure value to 100, and I'll take the density value up to 100 as well, and I'll drag on this guy's chest. And notice that I'm just cutting a hole into it that's almost as big as the brush itself. And now I'll go ahead and press Control Z, or Command Z on a Mac, to undo that change. So that we can compare that to a density value of zero, which is going to give you a smaller dent. And so you can think of it as being analogous to the brush tool's hardness value. Now I tend to leave Pressure and Density set to their default, which are 100 for Pressure, and Density 50%, at least where the warp tool is concerned. Now let's talk about undoing and redoing. Let's say I brush once again into what remains of this guy's chest. If I want to undo that brushstroke, I press Control Z, or Command Z on a Mac. If you press Control or Command Z again, then you redo, just as in Photoshop proper. If you want to back step, then you press Control Alt Z, or Command Option Z on a Mac. And then if you want to forward step, you press Control Shift Z, or Command Shift Z on a Mac. So again, that's exactly how things work inside Photoshop as well. Alright, let's try doing something real here. I'll go ahead and click on the Restore All button, in order to get rid of all those changes. And now I'll zoom in, and I'll increase the size of my brush fairly dramatically, maybe to a size value of 400, and then I'll drag in just a little bit. When warping inside the liquify window, you want to work gently on the image to avoid stretch marks. Because notice if you do this number where you go ahead and cave that guy's stomach in right away, then you're going to start squishing a bunch of details, and you're going to make a mess of things. Now this guy is pretty forgiving because he's set against a white background, but we might as well establish some best practices right away. Alright, so I'll undo that last broke stroke, maybe make my brush a little smaller by pressing the left bracket key a few times. Maybe go ahead and tuck the bottom of his stomach in, as well. So you can see, I am applying very small brush strokes, indeed. That is to say, I'm dragging small distances at a time. Now let's say I want to lift his pants up a little bit and straighten them out. And so there's a little bit of crookedness right inside of my brush, so I'll make my brush smaller and drag upward, and then I'll drag upward right about here as well in order to try to get things more or less as straight as possible. And remember, because you're working on smart object, you can always come back and change your mind later. So you don't have to get everything right in the first pass. Now I'm going to drag this up a little bit, I'm going to take the front of his pant, right there, and drag it inward, and try to flatten it out, as much as I can as well. So you might find yourself dragging back and forth. It is okay, by the way, to drag back and forth, inside the liquify window, because as we'll see in a future movie, we're creating a nondestructive mesh, and so any given brush stroke can be undone by dragging in the opposite direction. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and drag that outward a little bit, and we end up with this pretty flat stomach right here. Now, let's say we're making a mess of the fingers. I'll just go ahead and increase the size of my cursor right there, and I'll drag like so. So that the fingers are highly distorted. And this is the kind of stuff that happens all the time. In that case, you can switch to the next tool down the list, which is the Reconstruct tool, which has a very memorable keyboard shortcut of R for Reconstruct. And then just go ahead and increase the size of your cursor a little bit and drag over those fingers in order to return them to their original appearance. Alright so that's one way to work. I'll go ahead and press Control Z, or Command Z on a Mac, to undo that change. The other way is to stick with the Warp tool, and then with my big brush, you press the Alt Key, or the Option Key on a Mac, and drag in order to reconstruct those fingers like so. And then finally, notice this reconstruct button. If you click on it, you get an amount slider that allows you to incrementally undo your changes. So, at zero, you're seeing the original appearance of your image. And then, at 100%, you're seeing all of your modifications applied. Alright, but I'm happy with my changes, so I'll just go ahead and cancel out. Now of course you can scroll your image by pressing the space bar, but here on the PC buttons get kind of sticky, and so if I were to press the space bar right now, I would bring back that dialog box. That's not what I want. So I'll go ahead and click inside one of the numerical values, and now if I press the space bar, I get the hand tool. At which point, you can see that we still have some work to do. He's got this very fragile arm, shallow chest, and so forth, but you're always best off working slowly and carefully with liquify, which is why I generally recommend to work for about 5-10 minutes. Then click OK in order to apply your changes so far, at which point you'll end up with this editable smart filter here inside the layers panel, which allows you to make further changes in the future. And that is the briefest of all possible introductions to the liquify filter here inside Photoshop.

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