The Liquify tool

Wanna make things bigger? Smaller? Wanna increase your chest size without paying thousands of dollars? Wanna lose about 25 lbs without working out? Sure ya do! The liquify tool in photoshop can help you do this. This tool basically...

1. Makes selected areas bigger/smaller in proportion
2. Moves selected areas out/in/up/down/diagnol
3. Allows you to mask off areas you dont want the tool to effect

Lets say for example you have a pretty flat chested model by the beach...and you wanna amp up her chest a few notches. Understandable. Go up to your Filters and select liquify. In the left side bar you will see several options for distorting/warping. The bloat tool is perfect for making things bigger. Select the bloat tool and then adjust the brush size so its slightly bigger than the breast (do each individually). Click it once and then repeat to the other side....using even amount of clicks on each side...for obvious reasons. Continue this process until they are as big as you want them. On the other hand the same can be done with the pucker tool...except that makes things smaller...so by clicking with the pucker tool on the breast would have a negative effect because no one like mosquito bites :). Another cool tool in the liquify side bar is the forward warp tool. This tool allows you to drag out objects in your circle to specific spots...example....Lets say your models thighs are just a little too chunky...By using the forward warp tool and click on the outer thigh area, you can move it inward ...giving her a more shapely appearance. You will notice though that while you warp/bloat and pucker the background of the image will change as well...Never fear! Before doing anything to your model first grab the Freeze Mask tool on the left and paint everything you dont want to change in red. Example: If your trying to make someones arm skinnier and dont want the tree in the background to bend with the warping your about to make...Paint it red with the freeze mask. If you overdraw with the freeze mask, in other words put red where you didnt want it...just grab the thaw mask tool which acts as an eraser. There are also 3 other unique features...a swirl tool which is self explanatory, a push left tool which I wouldnt ever use and a turbulence tool which creates a suctioned type effect. If you've over done it...and want to bring back your original image...you can brush back spots you want with the reconstruct tool! Okay so just play around with this thing...Find a picture of a fat woman and try to make her skinny or vice versa...Better yet find a picture of a chick with really small breasts and make them bigger...like your girlfriends..she will appreciate it ( or dump you). Here is a picture I did of Kim Kardashian. These are some of the things I did in this picture.

1. Used the bloat tool on her breasts (several clicks)
2. Forward warped her hips out giving her that ghetto booty feel
3. Adjusted brightness/contrast
4. Used the smudge tool to erase her swimsuit straps
5. used lasso tool to select her swimsuit then adjusted its color balance to a different color.
6. Used topaz adjust filter to sharpen and make the image pop.

Feel free to try these things on pictures of your own...Id like some feedback on how your pics turn out..and feel free to ask more questions...

Before

After

The Art History Brush tool

Original

Photoshopped

A unique little tool found in your side bar is the Art history Brush tool. Along with this brush is the regular history brush tool. The Regular history brush tool basically restores your image back to its former self. Lets say you drew a black mustache on your person in the picture...If you take the history brush tool and go over the mustache it will disappear showing the original image...kinda like the eraser tool in a way. Enough about that ...we are here to talk about the "Art" history brush. Just like its brother the regular history brush , the art history brush tool works to bring back the original image wherever you brush it....but...it does it "artistically". It adds swirls and circles almost turning your once bland picture into a painting. You can mess with the brush settings as to how the brush responds....Example: Wether or not the brush swirls a little or leave a rounded ball...Hard to explain unless your actually seeing this. Just mess around with it. Its a really interesting tool to use and comes in handy when you want to make your pic look like an oil painting or really cool pop art. As in the picture's above I took a pic of Times square, Which is interesting enough but it needed some funk! I took the art brush and went over the whole picture with a large brush size...and took down the brush size in some areas because the smaller the brush size the more detail you will restore. I hope this bit of advice has been helpful to some and if you cant find the history brush I put a pic up of what the icon looks like and the toolbar just to make sure you clicked the right one!

On the beach.

Heres a pic I did a while back. I just found a Standard beach picture...and then found a hot babe.. who was not to mention completely naked...but for some unfound reason I shopped a black leather bikini on her. So all together I used three images to make this one. This image took me about oh...an hour or so to complete and still looks pretty good, despite the needed time to make minor adjustments. Here are my steps.

1. Find relevant pictures
2. Extract bikini and place it on model
3. extract model and place her in beach photo
4. adjust contrast/brightness of model, mess with color balance
5. create a new duplicate layer for her shadow...went to layer effects, blending options and gave her shadow layer a inner shadow and filled its opacity to 100% and messed with the angles until the entire layer was dark. Then turned layer opacity to about 30%.
6. Tweaked the angle of the shadow layer....Combined layers and saved.

Those are the basic steps...I erased some stuff here and there and played around with some filters...just little stuff thats pretty obvious to most.

Content Aware Scaling

Huh? What? I dont know what that is...Is that new? yes it is...Those who have adobe photoshop CS4 Should know about it, because its included in it...but all previous models do not have it. Well what is it? Content aware scaling ...in simple terms is a way to resize/scale your picture while keeping your subject somewhat untouched....It sounds alot more complex than it really is. Check out this tutorial from www.adobe.com and then Ill show you some pics ive done.....

Content-aware scaling According to ADOBE.Com

Contents [Hide]

• Resize images and protect content

• Preserve visual content when scaling images

• Specify content to protect when scaling

Resize images and protect content

Content-Aware Scale resizes an image without changing important visual content such as people, buildings, animals, and so forth. While normal scaling affects all pixels uniformly when resizing an image, content-aware scaling mostly affects pixels in areas that don’t have important visual content. Content-Aware Scale lets you upscale or downscale images to improve a composition, fit a layout, or change the orientation. If you want to use some normal scaling when resizing your image, there is an option for specifying a ratio of content-aware scaling to normal scaling.

If you want to preserve specific areas when scaling an image, Content-Aware Scale lets you use an alpha channel to protect content during resizing.

Content-Aware Scaling works on layers and selections. Images can be in RGB, CMYK, Lab, and Grayscale color modes as well as all bit depths. Content-Aware Scaling doesn’t work on adjustment layers, layer masks, individual channels, Smart Objects, 3D layers, Video layers, multiple layers simultaneously, or layer groups.

View full size graphic

A.

Original image

B.

Scaled narrower

C.

Scaled narrower, using content-aware scaling

For a video on content-aware scaling, see www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4120_ps. (Discussion of this feature begins at the four-minute mark.)

Preserve visual content when scaling images

1. (Optional) Choose Select > All if you’re scaling a Background layer.
2. Choose Edit > Content-Aware Scale.
3. Specify any of the following in the options bar:

   Reference Point Location

   Click a square on the reference point locator to specify the fixed point around which the image is scaled. By default this point is at the center of the image.

   Use Relative Positioning For Reference Point

   Click the button to specify the new position of the reference point in relation to its current position.

   Reference Point Position

   Positions the reference point at the specific location. Enter X-axis and Y-axis pixel dimensions.

   Scaling Percentage

   Specifies the image scaling as a percentage of the original size. Enter a percentage for the width (W) and height (H). If desired, click Maintain Aspect Ratio .

   Amount

   Specifies the ratio of content-aware scaling to normal scaling. Specify a percentage for content-aware scaling by typing in the text box or clicking the arrow and moving the slider.

   Protect

   Chooses an alpha channel that specifies an area to protect.

   Protect Skin Tones

   Attempts to preserve regions that contain skin-tones.

4. Drag a handle on the bounding box to scale the image. Press Shift as you drag a corner handle to scale proportionately. When positioned over a handle, the pointer becomes a double arrow.
5. Click either Cancel Transform or Commit Transform .

Specify content to protect when scaling

1. Make a selection around the content you want to protect and then, in the Channels panel, click Save Selection As Channel .
2. (Optional) Choose Select > All if you’re scaling a Background layer.
3. Choose Edit > Content-Aware Scale.
4. In the options bar, choose the alpha channel you created.
5. Drag a handle on the bounding border to scale the image.

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You see it isnt that hard to understand!!! It just takes a little practice using too, but in a sense content aware scaling basically does all the work itself! Now , You still have to have Version CS4 to get this new superpower so...get to buying it and check out my Scaling picture..

Before Content scaling

After Content Scaling

The smudge tool

The smudge tool can be used in many situations...such as the way I used it below.I really wanted to get rid of my models splotchy freckles. If your editing a picture of a person it can be very handy in

1. Getting rid of blemishes
2. Making the image more cartoony
3. blending harsh lines
4. distorting the image altogether

In this image I took a relatively small brush and grabbed the smudge tool. I set the strength to around 21% because I just wanted to Soften things a bit. The technique I use with the smudge tool when it comes to skin is...rotate it in small circles keeping away from drastic changes in color...Meaning dont smudge something white into something dark...if you do, your gonna notice it. As you can see I did more than just smudge in this picture....Of course.. I adjusted the brightness/contrast made it a little darker and then went into my filters and played around with Topaz Adjust ( WHICH IS SOMETHING YOU WILL HAVE TO BUY, IT DOES NOT COME STOCK ON PHOTOSHOP). This picture was not photoshopped to look cosmetically correct...it was made with art in mind. Here are the Before and after pictures....

Before

After

Swapping Faces. (Extract tool)

This is the most sought after technique in photoshop. You see it all the time on the web and even sometimes in advertisements. To do this you have to have two pictures. The first picture has to be the body you want to put the face on. The second picture has to be of the face. Keep in mind these two pictures should relate in some way....Example...If the head in the Picture A is looking left , then the head in picture B should be looking left. This is because you dont want the face your photoshopping to look out of proportion and such...obviously. So what your gonna wanna do is this..I will be calling The Body picture PIC A and the Face Picture Pic B.

1. On pic B (face pic) Extract the face you want by going to filter and then extract. After you have circled the face with the green pen..and filled it with blue you can now click finish or done. ***Its okay to have a little extra in this pic..you can erase some of it later.
2. After you extract the face it will save it as a new layer...drag that layer into the body picture and you will have to then resize it and place it over the existing face.
3. After resizing and any warping/transforming that needs to be done, take the eraser tool and erase any extra from the face layer.
4. Your face now may be a couple shades too dark or a bit too much contrast so go to image>adjustments> Brightness/contrast and tweak the levers until you get what you want.
5. If step 4 left you still unhappy you can mess with the color balance too until you get what you want.
6. After youve made all your last minute mods and tweaks...you can merge all visible layers and your pic is complete.

That is the simple steps to it...Of course if your just doing it for fun those are the only ones you need to know....if you really wanna make it look authentic and real..your gonna have to spend a little bit of time messing with drop shadows and inner shadows and stuff and even maybe have to render some lighting effects..Practice Makes perfect..and before you know it, you'll be making pictures like this one of Megan Fox I made.

Before

AFTER