Lessons

Lesson Info

Body Shaping: Liquify

Now we get to go and play with one of my favorite photo shop toys ever, which is liquefy and so that's what I'm going to get teo and uh what it all comes down to is that same mantra of you're helping somebody look their best you're helping them you're improving things that people wouldn't necessarily want um for example the big one all the time is well muffin tops like what else do you know what sue column of and then I said the bride's with the really tight to like every bride no brides were straps anymore and so they all have some problem areas of but it's also smoothing out wrinkles and clothing and I always along gate people's necks and there's so many different things so I'm just gonna go through it and talk about some of the tools what they mean and liquefy and I will say that there is a difference here's where one of the difference exists see essex has fifteen thousand pixels is how big you could make your brush in liquefy sees five is only fifteen hundred and then a few before ...

that was seven hundred so that's one of the big teeth is that they give you know, because I who wants upgrade every single time but then I really really wanted that tool and so that's that's one of them so I'm gonna show you how to use liquefy so when you finish up with the photo of my dad who's very gracious and he actually sent my mom sent a photo of my dad watching me re touch him, it was cute I'm gonna post that to facebook excellent! So I'm just going teo even out his teeth a little bit uh I definitely have had plenty of clients for example, I had one client recently meaning I didn't really do much of introduction for myself, so I wasn't going too much is just going to say real quick people out there that don't know me I'm a portrait fashion photographer based in new york and my clients very drastically um I shoot fashion campaigns for jewellery cos for cosmetic companies, I also photographed a lot of celebrities and, um big big chunk of my income right now is based off of photographing athletes, and so I get a lot of athletes who come in and they need me to photograph them and style them in a way where it's not the typical them in a jersey with the basketball or whatever it may be but it's showing more of their brand so you know, very high end or edgy or incorporating other elements their personality and so what that comes with is my reaching needs to be spot on I need to fit their goals because they're paying a lot of money they have very specific requests and what they want fix and so if I had no one person come in recently who had a little bit of space between her teeth she wanted close up I had somebody else who had one longer tooth who wanted it short or somebody who had a scar somebody who thought her forehead was too big like all these different people and they want you know they're paying you to look their best but still look like them and so that's kind of the big challenge and I outsource some photo shop stuff minimal majority that I keep it in house I'm tryingto have quality control over that so let's talk about fixing teeth and I'm just an example of what I might dio on but I know that was something my dad had requested that I fixed for him on this photo so I thought it was appropriate so if I select his teeth and hit command j copies into nuclear we've done that so I'm going to open up this is be the first thing that we've done in liquefy and liquefies under filter liquefy and in general what I recommend you do if there's a part of the face or the body or something that needs to be liquified make a selection and copied into a new layer because look if I say so processor intensive, you're better off having a smaller area that has to create measures messages of that having the whole entire photo s o that's why, if I need to liquefy this just a mouth or maybe just the face or just an arm, I give myself a little bit of leeway so I can see how it's looking with the rest of the body but it's going to be much more of a faster process if I just select part of it so filter liquefied and it's going to open up and I'm going to zoom in and what he wanted to fix, I was just kind of even out his front teeth and kind of make it a little bit flatter er the tool that we're going to use for this in the top left is the ford warp tool and most of the time, ford work tool is a tool that you use and liquefy, and what it allows you to do is to shift pixels allows you to move them so here's the things to stay away from in liquefy the first thing you want to remember is you don't want to move liquefy over a long distance you want to take one set of pixels and move them along distance because it stretches and distorts those pixels, though actually smear. So this is what I've seen looking at tabloids, for example, where you can see this smeared pixels along and ej actually see them change shape you want to stay away from moving from a long distance, and so another way to deal with that is if you need to move along distance, you keep moving and sampling from a different area, so I'll give you I'll give you a demonstration of that. Another thing typically is that you want to you is pretty much the biggest brush you can use without affecting unwanted pixels because what you get let's say that you have a girl whose arm maybe it's a bit wider and you wanted to smash hit it a little if you use a small brush, you have to do lots of little movement and she ends up having a wavy arm. You're better off using a large brush in doing small movements and sampling from different areas, and so we're going to do this example and I will get to other different tools we'll talk about the push tools in the freeze mask and all of that, but right now we're just going forward work, and I'm going to actually select the bottom left if I slept on the zoom tool, I can actually yeah, put a circle or put a rectangle around the mouth, grab the ford warp tool and I can adjust my brush the same way as I would otherwise with my left bracket to make it smaller, right brackets make it larger and I can kind of pulled down straighten out these teeth and you see how it's kind of evening it out and changing the shape so it's pretty easy to do so and it takes you know, a couple of seconds and I will talk about some other considerations that you have but it really can be a simple is that I had a lot of clients to the jagged teeth on the bottom they just wanted it smoothed out takes absolutely no time at all we can reshape gun lines you can make different team teeth bigger, smaller whatever you need to do so that's just using liquefy and the ford work tools kind of move things around if you mess up and do something that you I didn't mean to I know that forever I thought that I had to cancel and start again because the tools that I see here is there's reconstruct and restore all but it kind of what reconstruct does it backs you up a step but that's kind of halfway and so it doesn't really like to undo anything and wreak store all just slips it clean so the tool underneath the ford work tool is a reconstructed all what did allow you to do is wherever you paint it it'll start moving it back towards its original state so for example, if I paint the reconstruct tool repeatedly over this tooth it eventually moves it back to its original state um and you can change the density and pressure and we'll talk about that a little bit later, but let me just even out his tooth again, I'm ok, and after I show you this that I'm going to move on and go to a more full body example, so if you watch kind of pretty easily even at his teeth, uh, just to give you a breakdown again of what I did to this photo and, you know, again the hair that was just quickly applied, um, I used the work tool to move in double chin, I wait in his teeth, I also lighten some of it, and I did actually light in his eyes a bit, and then this was me showing you how you can darken or light in roots for if a subject has that problem, but let's, go look at a full body example of how a used liquefy, and then I also use a close up shot, so we're going to take this photo, and what I'm going to tell you is what I say I returned with the sweater up there, um, I put this photo up more or less specifically because she doesn't look like she needs any help, you know, it's, um, it's show you some things that I would consider for a beauty or fashion image where you look at it interesting she's super skinny what does she need done? She doesn't need much. Well, there's a few things that I would tweak and then also there's things that I'll go more extreme just for teaching purposes. So we open up this and open this up and liquefy and I duplicated my backgrounds like it's kind of a before and after, and I'm gonna give you a couple things to think about that I do pretty much every day portrait and beauty shot that I shoot, I make these changes, one of the first things that I almost always dio is a lower people's shoulders like pretty much everybody, man, woman you know, someone skinny, someone have you? It doesn't really matter. Um, I pretty much always I'll just open this back up there pretty much always lower the shoulders, the treasonous couple things one when people have higher shoulders, they look more tense and they look stressed if you can lower, they look more relaxed in the photo. The other thing is having a longer neck makes somebody look skinnier, just just having a longer neck make someone look skinnier when somebody has no lack neck, it puts a lot of weight on, so you was somebody skinny like this, I try to lower those shoulders, so I'm going to start there and like I said, this isn't an extreme example but I thought it would be a good place to start so I'm going to ford work tool increasing the size of my brush and what I would do is I would just lower her shoulders here so I would go and just lower them a bet I would pull down her clavicles because that will give the impression of her having a longer neck and so that will look it will make her look give me more slender and elegant uh we talked about this a little bit before I have the clients come in who were paranoid about their forehead no she doesn't have a large forehead but I would say regularly in the portrait cy dio I change the hairline whether if it's a guy so that they're not freaking out of if they're having a little receding hairline um or women all the time a lot of athletes that I photograph you know there used teo having also having their hair pulled back tight and so austin wear their hair back because they're comfortable with that means in a photo is just a lot of forehead so that's why I often do this I'm going to take my ford worked tau and just pull down on the hairline a little bit doing this very very often in my photography okay salute your too kind of basic changes that I would do um other considerations all right, so I see down here, I don't know if you can see it's a photo, but I think that her leg looks a little misshapen, like children. I think schwabe has really nice thighs, so she's, big thighs and little knee um, I would get a large brush and I would pull that in now, the problem that you run into when I said before, if you do a small brush is let's say, I'm trying to move her arm in all of a sudden you get kind of a wavy arm if you try to move it and you see how you can see those those lines so that's something that you want to stay away from me, you big of russia's you possibly can. Other things that I've used local fight tool for kind of zooming in is clothing a photo might look really beautiful and elegant, but a rumple of clothing or some kind of ugly wrinkle doesn't look good, so use forward warp to smooth things out, and I will just go along and smooth out the wrinkles and fix everything that way and notice how I'm going to see if I could take like an area like here. If you see this if I move pixels over long distance when you can see them but they move and that they have there there's a streak to them so that something you want to stay away from all right? So she is super super skinny but let's say that I wanted to move her stomach in. Okay, here's the problem that I typically run into I say that I want is a big brush I'm over some again look what moves her arm moves okay, so you weren't into this problem off when using liquefy maybe it's you want to lower someone's shoulders but when you do so it drags the draw out or someone has her hands on the hits you and move their waste him but it moves the leg are there their arms in with their waste? Another example you have a subject up against a brick wall you move their body and to change shape and now you have wavy lines on the brick wall so and liquefy either is a tool to help you with that and it's called do here um it's called the freeze mask tool and what it lets you d'oh it is going to give you a brush and it's right? The one that looks like a mass that we've seen before the rectangle with the circle in it with a brush that's the freeze masterful and so what lets you do is it gives you a brush and wherever you paint it gives you basically red wherever you paint, anything you paint on will be frozen in place so when you're using liquefy it's not going to allow you to move those pixels so now when I freeze that in place when I go back and grab my ford warp toe when I move that in it doesn't move the arm it just grabs the other pixels so same thing if you have a sign maybe words in the background of a photograph on trying to liquefy you freeze that in place, you move it with liquefy and they don't have to worry about them getting all messed up so I use that frequently um okay, other things that are useful also if you want to unfreeze something, maybe there's something now that you want to move, maybe now that I've moved some again I think her arm looks a little big in the forearm area if you go to the two underneath that looks like an eraser, you can remove that mask so it's not like it's permanent or anything. Okay, other things that I would change an interesting one that I play with sometimes that people always find amusing is out often lengthen somebody's hair um four kind of movement and because hair the shape that it is I can sometimes give it a little whisper at the end or increase the length and adding volume to somebody's hair usually makes him look healthier. Um, and this is unrelated, but kind of in the photography broom. I try to add movement to my photos if you have movement to your photos, if they're not static, uh, they're more engaging, and it seems like you're capturing a moment in time instead of capturing just, you know, kind of a static shot. So if I have somebody's hair moving, I want emphasize it even more. I'll do so sometimes by copying and transforming or warping the hair or by liquefy it depends on the tool. Now notice over here, see what says brush signs. If you guys have maybe see us five, you'll go up to, like, fifteen hundred. I can go up to fifteen thousand, so they made a huge difference. A huge change in that tool from c s five to see a six. Uh, okay, a couple of the changes would see depends on the type of photography you're doing, but you do have the ability to do an inexpensive breast augmentation. Um, and this sounds awful, but practice makes perfect like to make them look really, now that I am encouraging everyone teo practice, making everyone's just look larger, but, um something that I'll do here is I'll actually lower her chest like your actual chest and then pull out other areas of the chest so you'll see you're ready um I would lower her chest here and then I will kind of pull out here and it's all about realistically what shapes they would look like some people use a tool called the bloat tool which is right here and it kind of takes from a center point expands everything makes it look larger from a center so that might look better facing straight on for example uh so these tools I mean it's it's kind of a practice makes perfect thing, but I definitely have used those it always helps to I have reality tv stars a lot um that will come on and for example, if they were going teo pad uh prather brought to make the dress look more full than it looks too tight and doesn't look good so I'm like no, no, no, I hope you out afterwards just let's have the dress fit and I'll fix it so there's all these things that sometimes photoshopped will make everything work better in the end another tool that I might use looking at this photo just giving idea is because of her pose she's kind of turned broad to me so her shoulders too I mean, I think it looks kind of wide so I might actually make my tool huge and slide her entire shoulder over it'll make her look more slender you know if they're going for the kim kardashian look, you can do that you know whatever you want you guys get the idea so I'm going to open it up so you can see of a foreign after real quick so watching the hair the forehead, the shoulder everything right um but I do think and you know, I do go a little bit extreme in my demos just so you can kind of see quick clannish screen I really truly would say if you take anything away from this that you might not have thought of lowering the shoulders makes a big difference it really does. So use it in beauty all the time I'm going to continue on unless you guys have any questions. All right, cool. Um we open up another photo real quick to another tool made me okay. Can I ask you a question? Read it. Um question was from fashion tv on that last one how would you remove the creases in the great outfit what's a quick fix er I actually usually use a kind of a combination of things for creases in the outfit. Sometimes I'd say most often I would use clone stamp on lytton at ojai opacity I'll try first to try the patch tool if pashtu works awesome if not it's clone stamp on a light opacity and then for like other fine wrinkles I use portraiture and I select the clothing and run portraiture on the clothing so a lot of times I love girls that maybe wear a silk dress but little imperfections in the silk look awful so I'll run portraiture on that also as a quick tip if anybody out there has dirty white seamless backgrounds which I I run into this all the time where somebody walked on the floor or there is dirt on the background I'll run portraiture on the white of the background have it turned up pretty high and then just make sure I don't paint on my subject and it works awesome especially if you guys have had where maybe a paper where the humidity made it work I get rid of the wrinkles on the background and that warping by running portraiture on the background um and it works great and also works with maslin and whatnot you just makes you don't apply it to the face and I use it often so it would probably be a little bit of uh patch and then also portraiture all right so I'm gonna show you a couple of the things on this delete these layers couple of their liquefy tools for this girl this is ah fashion image that I did for my um for one of the trainings that I had if I do liquefying I would come in here and I'm just looking to improve lines, right? So I want this to be smoother here and notice when I am using this brush I'm not grabbing from the center and pulling I'm actually pushing from the white on the outside and compressing because here's why? If I'm pushing from the white on the outside it's just empty white pixels when I push in I'm compressing white, which isn't noticeable versus taking black and stretching the black um so I will do that I'll grab from the outside and pull in the different over on the right hand side we have your brushing details you brush sighs well that's brush size and makes sense brush density I would say it's kind of an equivalent of what we think of for feathering or the softness of a brush outside of liquefy so it's going to have different strength on the edges and it will in the center and so the higher that you have the brush density that means on the edges it's a one hundred percent as well and then your brush pressure is really one it works well when you have a tablet, for example because it's actually talking about fresh pressure but then when you move something with liquefy how easily and quickly and far isn't moving uh, because a lot of times I actually prefer tohave resistance, so right now my brush pressure is sixty seven I like to have resistance so that I don't accidentally blew my my, uh, cursor and then have and something that's over liquefied, so it actually helps a little bit. So what I would do for this girl is that would pull in her waist on either side of it, and I would actually even accentuate this curve pull in this bottom nge the bottom right hand, and I'd pull in a little bit for shape and then I'd probably reduce is just a tiny bit um a couple other tools that I wanted to demo one of them is right here, and it's called the push push tool, and the push tool functions differently, depending on if you move it up, down left or right, so I will show you hear how it works if I take my brush tool, I'm going to click and drag up, click and drag up it pushes pixels in and it's going to push all those pixels in at an equal amount so it might, and this is what you're controlling through your brush density in your brush pressure, your brush pressure is going to make a big difference about how far over it pushes those pixels now this example, okay? Super, super extreme but if you have, uh, an edge of something, maybe it's an arm that you want just talking a little bit. I see people frequently do this with next if you just want to tuck that neck in a little bit on the side or something a tiny bit. If you go up it pulls it it pushes it in. If you drag down, it pulls it out. So if I come in, I could kind of zoom in tight. I could make sure it's sea and put it on my push left tool. I could drag my density and pressure down, decrease the size my brush helps decrease the size my brush and then trace a little bit and see, I was just pushing it in for me, but it pushes it in a smooth way. I don't have to worry about lumps and bumps from liquefy. So same thing here. If I want to decrease size a little bit, I can just kind of trace over and it does so smoothly. Um, same thing. Maybe if I want to bring that back out, I can kind of trees over the kind of depends. Uh, where you want to have your brush? Is if you have your brush density low you could make it more subtle if you're using the edge of the brush remember how I said it's feathered if you don't want to have it pushed all the way in you wanna have the edge of the brush with a low brush density like the feather so it's just kind of touching the edge and that will keep it nice and subtle like I have their first encyclical right on it it's going to be much more severe so usually just an edge will keep it just a little bit like I said for in lengthening next or something like that it works really really well same thing applies for going side to side left to right if I go from left to right it lifts it up if I go from right to left it pushes it down so it's it's the push tool I had a question from phil birdie and they're wondering how can you go back if you make a mistake I guess how can you go back and partially liquefy since there's no history panel the only way you can go back if you select the reconstruct tool underneath the ford work tool and you have to go specifically on that area and paint back otherwise if you d'oh reconstruct it'll step back but it doesn't step back with what you did most recently it basically will take everything back like ten percent or something like that. So if you liquefy the entire body and you hit reconstruct, it'll move everything back a little bit, which is not usually what you want. So either you start again or you're going to use your reconstruct brush and just paint over that area where you made the mistake, you know, it'll bring it back. Another question, from doug be photo in portland is is there a way to have a rectangular brush to use with warp so it doesn't have a rounded, leading edge, oblong, whatever. Not appear, sir, not that I'm aware of, and if anybody out there knows of otherwise, let me no, I've never actually thought of using that, so there could be something magical and awesome. But I'm going to say no unless somebody else knows otherwise, all right.