Photoshop
Filters and Special Effects
Liquify Command
The Liquify command was introduced in Photoshop 6.0. You can distort images using tools that can push, pull, expand, contract, rotate and reflect pixels. It can be used for silly fun like making caricatures of people's faces or for creating special effects. The process is called Liquify because it looks like the image is melted when you manipulate it with the Liquify tools. In this lecture there will be two exercises. In one, you'll create a caricature and in the other, you'll be 'melting' the CD-ROM image to create abstract art.
Liquify Dialog
All of the Liquify effects are applied within the Liquify dialog which is opened by using the Filter > Liquify command or using the keyboard shortcut Shift-Ctrl-X (Shift-Cmd-X).
Liquify Tool Set
Your main focus will be the Liquify tools that appear on the left side of the dialog:
- Warp
- Pulls pixels in the direction of the brush stroke. It works like the Smudge tool but with much more power.
- Twirl Clockwise
- Rotates pixels in a clockwise direction as you hold down the mouse button.
- Twirl Counterclockwise
- Rotates pixels in a counter-clockwise direction as you hold down the mouse button.
- Pucker
- Causes pixels to contract and move towards the centre of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button.
- Bloat
- Causes pixels to expand and move away from the centre of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button.
- Shift Pixels
- Moves pixels in a direction perpendicular to the brush stroke.
- Left stroke: shifts pixels down.
- Right stroke: shifts pixels up.
- Upward stroke: shifts pixels left.
- Downward stroke: shifts pixels right.
- Reflection
- Not a very intuitive tool. Dragging will copy pixels perpendicular to the direction of the brush stroke. holding down the Alt (Option) copies pixels in the opposite direction. With some practice, you can create a reflection of an area, like a scene reflected in water, by using multiple, overlapping strokes.
- Reconstruct
- After you've warped, twirled and otherwise mangled an image, if you want to restore areas to their original appearance, either partially or completely, this tool will do the job. There are options for reconstructing that determine how it will be applied to the image.
- Freeze
- You can freeze an area by painting a red mask overlay with this brush. This prevents any distortions from affecting the frozen area.
- Thaw
- This tool removes Freezing, letting you edit the area again. It works like an eraser to remove the red mask overlay.
You can adjust the width and pressure of each of the tools using the controls on the right side of the panel. Brush Size is self-explanatory. Brush Pressure determines how easily you can move pixels. To maintain more precise control, use lower pressure settings. If you're using a pressure-sensitive stylus, enable the Stylus Pressure option.
Practice Exercise 1: Creating a Caricature
If you're tired of looking at Our Lady of the Feathers, here's your chance to exact some revenge.
- Open up woman.psd.
- Make the Background layer the active layer. Go to Layer > Duplicate Layer. In the Duplicate Layer dialog select New from the Document menu and name the new image liquify1.psd.
- For some unknown reason, this image displays at quite a small size in the Liquify dialog at these dimensions and there is no zoom control in the dialog. To get around this, draw a rectangular marquee around the top part of the image, leaving part of the bottom unselected. Our marquee was 496x580 pixels. We cropped it to that size in the final result shown below.
- Open the Liquify dialog by using the Filter > Liquify command or the keyboard shortcut Shift-Ctrl-X (Shift-Cmd-X).
- We're not going to give you specific instructions here. This is your opportunity to have some fun while getting acquainted with the Liquify tools. Here are some general tips to get you started:
- Press down with the Bloat tool to make a feature appear larger, like the nose.
- Press down with the Pucker tool to shrink a feature, like an eye or the mouth.
- Drag with the Warp tool to stretch areas as though they are made of putty.
- Press down with a Twirl tool to twirl the paint.
- Remember that you can make the brushes smaller or larger and change their pressure in the Tool Options panel.
- You can use the Undo keyboard shortcut to undo the last action.
- To undo all actions you've taken in the dialog, hold down the Alt (Option) key. The Cancel button will change to a Reset button. Clicking on it will restore the original image.
- When you've finished mangling this lady, save your file and close it.
This is what we what we came up with. The curls were made with the Twirl tools. The nose and teeth were enlarged with the Bloat tool and sometimes frozen with the Freeze tool to protect them while working on nearby areas. Other than that, everything else was done with the Warp tool and sometimes the Bloat tool.
Practice Exercise 2: Creating Abstract Art
In this exercise you'll use the Liquify tools again to melt and warp the CD-ROM image. You'll also do some work with layers to enhance your result. Every attempt at this exercise will turn out differently. Here is one of our results:
- Open CDROM.tif.
- Use the Save As command to save the file as liquify2.psd. Close the original file.
- Go to Image > Image Size to open the Image Size dialog. Disable the Resample Image check box and set the Resolution to 72. Click OK.
- Display the Channels panel and Ctrl-click (Cmd-click) on the Alpha 1 channel to load it as a selection.
- Switch back to the Layers panel. Use the shortcut Ctrl-J (Cmd-J) to copy the selected CD to a new layer.
- Make the Background layer the active layer. Press X to set the foreground and background colours to their defaults and then press Alt-Backspace (Option-Delete) to fill the Background layer with black. This will paint over the original CD-ROM image on that layer.
- Make Layer 1 with the CD on it the active layer.
- Use the shortcut Ctrl-T (Cmd-T) to apply the Transform bounding box to the CD. In the Tool Options bar, click on the link button between the W and H fields to constrain proportions. Enter a value of 75 in either the W or H fields. The other field should change to 75 at the same time. The settings are illustrated below. Press the Enter (Return) key twice: once to lock in the values and again to apply the transformation. The CD will be 75% of its original size. The purpose of making the CD smaller is to give you room to stretch and warp it in the image window.
- Use the Filter > Liquify command to open the Liquify dialog.
- How you distort the CD is up to you. Just play around with the various tools to make the image unrecognizable as a CD. We found it worked best to make the CD's shape asymmetrical, emphasize the black outline areas and punch some holes in it with the Reflection tool or dragging with the Warp tool. Once you're done, click the OK button. Ours looked like the image below after it was liquified. It's pretty dull at this point but once we do some layer magic, it will take on more brilliant colours and interesting shapes.
- Save your file.
- Duplicate Layer 1 with the warped CD.
- On the Layer 1 copy go to Edit > Transform > Rotate 180o.
- Change the layer's blend mode to Overlay and watch the colours come to life.
- To make the colours even more brilliant, duplicate the Overlay layer. You can experiment with different layer modes for one or both of the duplicated layers to see how they work with your image.
- Save your file and close it.
Here is another version we came up with:
If you have Photoshop 7.0, there is an image called Postcard.psd in the Samples folder. You can open it up to see how it was constructed. Part of the effect was done with the Liquify command. If you don't have it, you can view this stunning image on a separate page.
Liquify Command Summary
- The Liquify tools are used to distort pixels in an image.
- The width and pressure of the tools can be adjusted in the Liquify dialog's Tool Options panel.
- If you create a selection before opening the Liquify dialog, only that portion of the image will display in the dialog.
- The Undo keyboard shortcut will undo the last change in the Liquify dialog.
- To restore the image to its original state while in the dialog, hold down the Alt (Option) key to change the Cancel button to a Reset button. Click on the Reset button.
Liquify Command Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Liquify: Shift-Ctrl-X (Shift-Cmd-X)
- Reset Liquify dialog: Alt (Option) to display Reset button.
- Warp tool: W
- Twirl Clockwise tool: R
- Pucker tool: P
- Bloat tool: B
- Shift Pixels tool: S
- Reflection tool: M
- Reconstruct tool: E
- Freeze tool: F
- Thaw tool: T
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