Photoshop Liquify - Slimming Down
Tuesday, October 6th 2009 @ 6:10 PM (not yet rated)
One of the most fun tools in Photoshop is Liquify. It is so easy to take a chubby person and make them, well…not so chubby!
Neil actually volunteered to model for this article. (We love you, Neil.) He would like everyone to know that he was pushing his stomach out for this “before” photo.
First the before and after. Then I will show you how I did it:
Step One: Lasso the area you will be working on
By selecting just the part of the image you need, the image will be larger in the Liquify window and it will load faster. Don’t worry about precision; just do a rough outline.
Step Two: Open the Liquify Window
Filter>Liquify
Step Three: Freeze anything that you don’t want to move
Choose the Freeze tool and paint red on the vertical line of the building to insure that the edge of the building doesn’t move.
Step Four: Choose the Warp Tool and push the stomach in.
Like any brush, you can change the size of the brush with the right and left bracket keys. Do a little at a time, working up and down the area until you are satisfied with the results.
Step Five: Click OK
Ctrl-D will deselect, getting rid of the crawling ants. To see what you have done, go back three steps in History to before the Lasso and you will see what the image looked like before Liquify.
More to do?
I realized at this point that the belt needed to come up in order to complete the illusion of a flat stomach. I went back in to Liquify to move the belt up.
The neck area is frequently a place where extra weight shows. In this case, Neil has some extra skin hanging over the shirt collar. While I am fixing that, I will also push the neck in a little on the left.
After opening the selection in the Liquify window, it is a good idea to use the freeze tool again to freeze the chin. I will be working close to it and don’t want it to move or get distorted.
Push the top edge of the collar up until it is on a straight line and push the neck in on the left to slim it.
When I am done, it is really fun to click back and forth to see the before and after. Wow, Neil looks great!
The final touch will be to use the clone tool to get rid of the “stretch marks” on the wall next to his stomach so no one will ever know what we did!
How far do you go?
Use your best judgement when deciding how much slimming to do. I want to make the person look better but still like themselves. In my opinion, it should not be obvious that you have done anything unless you compare a “before” and “after.”
Here is a rule I have: I do not tell the person in the photograph what I have done. An amateur photographer told me recently about slimming down the stomach of his golfing buddy. They all had a good laugh about it but how do you think his buddy really felt? As photographers, we have far more power than we realize over the self image of our subjects. Isn't it better to uplift them?
Now that you know the trick, who needs diet and exercise?
