The Warp and Reconstruct tools

In this movie I will introduce you to the Liquify Filter, and I'll show you how to work with the Warp and Reconstruct tools. Now the first thing you need to know about Liquify is that it's a static command, in other words, it makes permanent modifications to the pixels in an image. And even though it's listed here under the Filter menu, you can not apply Liquify as a Smart Filter to a Smart Object. So what I recommend you do before applying the filter is go ahead and make a copy of your image by pressing Ctrl+Alt+J, or Command+Option+J on the Mac, if only so that you can come back to the original image if necessary. All right! I'll click OK in order to make that layer, and then I will go up to the Filter menu and choose Liquify. Notice it has a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Shift+X, or Command+Shift+X on the Mac.

The next thing you will see is this massive dialog box. Liquify is really an independent utility that just happens to run inside Photoshop. Now I am going to go ahead and zoom in, and you can see at 50% we get a smooth interpolation of the image, at 66.7% we get a choppy interpolation, and then at 100% everything looks great again. So my recommendation there is that you work at 25%, 50%, or best of all 100% so you can really gauge the quality of your modifications.

Now just to make sure you and I are on the same page, you may want to press the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, and click on what was formerly the Cancel button--it's now Reset--and that will not only go ahead and reset the image-- which of course is unnecessary because we haven't done anything to it--but it goes ahead and resets all the options inside the dialog box as well. By default, the Forward Warp tool is selected. There is nothing forward about it. In other words, lurking in the wings is not a Backward Warp tool, and so I prefer to just think of this as being the Warp tool, and you can get to it by pressing the W key--which is worth remembering because this is by far Liquify's most useful tool--and what it allows you to do is scoot details around.

Now before I begin, I need to increase the size of my brush, which I can do by modifying the Brush Size value here, or you can change the brush from the keyboard by pressing the Square Bracket keys, those are the keys to the right of the P as in Paul key on an American keyboard. The right Bracket key makes the brush bigger, the Left Bracket key makes it smaller. If you want to move very quickly, you can press and hold the key, like so. So I want the brush to be about yea big, and then I am going to start scooting her cheek in, like so. and notice that I am working with very small brush strokes.

So you don't want to make modifications at a time because for one thing they will look ridiculous, but for another, you will also end up getting stretch marks, which is definitely not something we want with our cosmetic modifications. So I am going to press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac, to undo that change. And by the way, you do have multiple undos inside Liquify, and they work just like they do inside Photoshop proper. So if I press Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z again, then I go ahead and redo that brush stroke. If you want to step backwards, you press Ctrl+Alt+Z, or Command+Option+Z on the Mac.

If you want to step forward, then you press Ctrl+Shift+C, or Command+Shift+C on the Mac. Now I am going to tuck in some more of these details, running the risk, of course, of messing up the eye, and we will come back to that in just a moment. I want to tuck her forehead down as well. Again, easy does it. The more slowly you can make your modifications the better they are going to end up looking. Small brush strokes are always bigger than big ones, even if you're using a large brush as I am here, and it's okay if you end up sort of tucking something one direction, and then you have to come back and reconstruct it later, like I'm kind of dragging at her collar, as I am moving her jaw line up here, and I might be working with a little bit too big of a brush, so I will go ahead and revisit some of these details and pull her jaw in a different direction here, and I will go ahead and lift this up as well, potentially.

I might want to give her a little hint of a cheekbone right there. Now at this point I'm noticing that I've messed up the eye, and I could try to work on the eye using the Warp tool, but I could end up kind of making a mess of things, too, as I have. If ever you want to incrementally undo, then the tool of choice is this next one down, the Reconstruct tool, which has a keyboard shortcut of R, and now if I drag over the eye back and forth, I'll ultimately fully reconstruct it. So in other words, this tool applies incremental changes. All right! I am going to press W to switch back to Warp tool now, and I'm going to reduce the Size of my brush a little bit, paint that little bit of a cheekbone out slightly, like so, and I might also go ahead and tuck this area in and also tuck in some of the forehead.

I want to demonstrate something else you can do, so I am going to make a bad modification. If you want to get to the Reconstruct tool on the fly, then press the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, while you're painting with the Warp tool, and that will go ahead and reconstruct those details as you paint over them, and I am going to do the same thing over here on her collar as well, to bring that back down. A couple of other ways to reconstruct the image, one is to click Restore All which is going to completely restore that original image. The difference between that, by the way, and pressing the Alt key or the Option key and clicking on the Reset button is you're not resetting the settings, you're just restoring the image.

Naturally, you can undo a restoration by pressing Ctrl+Z, or Command+Z on the Mac, and that will get things back to the way I had them. Another way to reconstruct is to click on the Advanced Mode check box right there, and then click on the Reconstruct button, and notice that it says Revert Reconstruction. At an Amount valuable of 100%, you are not doing anything. It's a little bit confusing, if you ask me. So if you want to reconstruct, you actually have to lower the value, and if you go all the way to zero, then you will fully reconstruct the image, and you can see how incremental things are and how you can go back and forth here.

Pretty useful actually for getting a sense of what kind of changes you've made and whether you like what you've done. All right! I am going to tuck in this part of her face just a little bit more, taking care that I am not introducing any little puckers. And once I get to this point here, and I am thinking she looks pretty good, I will go ahead and click the OK button in order to apply my changes, and we go from this version of the image, which we saw at the very beginning of the movie, to this trimmer version right here, thanks to our ability to Warp and Reconstruct details using Liquify.