Liquify is a powerful tool that can come in handy in so many ways! Want to trim some fat off your own picture? Want to change a source to fit more nicely with another source? Liquify is your answer.But be warned, it takes some time to get used to using this tool. It can be discouraging at first, but with time your skill will increase and the rewards will be well worth it.Here are some basic tips:1) Use a brush size that is so big as to be ridiculous, but still small enough to fit in the area you need to use it in. The bigger you can make your brush, the better the results.2) Use short strokes, from numerous areas. If you take large chunks at a time from one spot the effect will be disastrous.3) Use the tool in short, repeated sessions. Make small changes, click ok, make sure it looks all right and try again for more. If you do too many changes at once, you cannot reverse them and will have to do it all over again! To illustrate some things you can do with liquify, let's start with an easy technique - making things thinner. (Photoshop diet here we come!)I've taken an image of a of someone giving the thumbs up. For starters, I'm going to focus on making the arm portion thinner. Let's make this guy anorexic!
Here's how we start:
The screen will look as follows: I've marked the areas you should be concerned with for now. The rest is up to exploration.
Ive set my brush size to a random 492. Using short, directed strokes will move the arm portion inwards. Don't just focus on the edges. Change the interior a bit to to make it look less compressed, and more natural.
Here is my result. The edges could use a little smoothing, but with patience, and care, it can be done in liquify.
If I want to make the thumb thinner I would do the same thing with a smaller brush. Again, large, but just large enough as not to affect other areas. In this case I used a size of 127.
Ok, so what if we want to make the arm fatter? We need a little more cunning on this one. We will need to make very short strokes, from random areas in the arm, to gradually bring the arm outwards. Here's basic map are areas to take from, though in reality I used far more, random areas from the image, baby step at a time.
Applying these ideas, I get this:
Let's go one step further and bend that thumb into and unnatural position. This is where your skills are really challenged. It will take a lot of moving from the the right first and matching with moving from the left. This is also where small changes and hitting OK really come in handy. It will give you a better look at what you have done and allow you to undo the steps if it doesnt look right. With some work I get this:
Ew! Now let's put in all into perspective and apply to it to a real situation. I have a chicken foot. And a coin. I want to the foot to look like it's grasping the coin, or at least holding onto it. When I paste and rotate the image I can spot immediate problems.
The red outlined areas indicate parts of the foot that just don't fit. I need to make them fit!
I'm going to work on the upper area first. To save some time, I use the polygonal lasso tool to outline that toe and layer via cut (right click). From there I am going to edit - free transform, rotate until it fits better onto my image, yet still matches up with the rest of the foot. Then I can apply liquify to that layer to fix up little things.
Now to liquify that bottom toe. I don't need to make a new layer out of it this time, it is distant enough from the main image that liquify will be quite sufficient. (There's really so much more I SHOULD do to round it out but for the tutorial I'm keeping it simple, and not picky) Here is my end result:
It fits! And looks pretty natural. From here we'll have to add some shading to make it look more natural, but thats another lesson :) In case you're wondering - I added a drop shadow and inner shadow effect to the layer and added filter - render - lighting effect (spotlight) to the coin to get this end result
It could use a little bit more work, but the liquify part is completed. Hope you found this tutorial helpful!