Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Retouching People, Part 2

Hi everyone--Michael Brown back with you again with another lesson in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 from educator.com.0000

In the last two lessons, we've been dealing with one of my four primary categories, remember?0006

Selections, corrections, re-touch and manipulation--we're dealing with re-touch.0014

We've dealt with the basic clone tools and with spot healing tools and how they work in the last lesson.0019

Just for a quick refresher, we took Debbie, who originally looked like this...and with our re-touch around the eyes, around the sides of the mouth, and in the neck area with removing the lines, we turned her into this, from there...to there, she looks a lot younger.0026

In this lesson, we're going to do re-touching people part two, and I'm going to introduce you to the Liquify Filter, which is a filter that you can do all sorts of wild things with if you wish, but... predominantly, I use this as a bi-contouring tool, or contouring something where you need a smooth or altering edge, and just maybe push it around a little bit.0048

The Liquify Filter is a bit of magic that allows you to push, pull, squeeze or bloat shapes, and I'll show you how to use it for re-touching people.0076

Let's get started!0086

Here is Debbie again, right where we left off from the last lesson.0087

We went from there...to there.0093

Now let's take a look at her more closely, and I look at her face and you notice right along here on the cheekline...it's protruding a little bit, we're not sure if that is her complete natural cheekline, or it's a matter of age and a little flesh, but I do notice that right at the chin (right in there and right in there) she's got it a little sunken and this is what happens with age as the fat in the face begins to dissipate and the skin begins to move in.0096

I would like to take and move this back out, smooth that and maybe bring in the cheeks just a little--again we want to maintain the integrity.0124

And the tool that we use to do that is a filter, under the Distort menu, called the Liquify Filter.0134

This is kind of a magic filter but, before I open it, it is a mathematically, calculation intensive filter and it's going to, no matter where you make a minor change, it's going to do calculation across the entire image just to make sure, so the way to speed things up is this is one of the cases where you use the rectangular marquee, with a zero pixel feather, and we're just going to draw a rectangle around the face because right now that is only where we're going to deal with (is the face).0141

Let's go ahead and zoom up, and let's go to the Filter menu down to Distort, over to the liquify filter--and here you have it.0176

And on the side you have a brush size and brush pressure, we can do more or less (we can drop that down just a little bit), and here are the various tools.0185

We have one that does what is called "Turbulence", and it just kind of smears things around and makes them look a little weird.0196

We have the Twirl tool: as you hold it, notice it spinning the eye in kind of a twirling fashion?0206

We have the Pucker tool, which makes things literally pucker.0215

We have the Bloat tool that does the opposite and it bloats things.0220

We also have the Shift Pixels tool, which does a very strange effect on things.0226

All sorts of weird stuff here--this one is the Reflection tool that creates a reflection of whatever you're after...looks like it's reflecting in glass.0233

All sorts of distorts, but the primary tools that we're going to use are the Warp tool, and the Bloat tool for this work here on re-touching people.0246

It's...when you open this up next time when you're practising, play around with the other ones but I'm going to show you, mostly, the Bloat and the Warp.0259

What we want to do...we want to pull out this indentation in the chin and the way the Warp tool works is you push (see what it's doing, it's pushing inward).0269

We're going to take the brush size down and you're going to want to do this very gently because it smears pixels, and we're going to pull out this area (just a little bit on the edge line) and there we have that (just a little bit more) and we're going to take and we're going to move in the chinline...(just...the cheekline, excuse me) just a little and very carefully you notice I'm working a little at a time (I'm just trying to bring that up so you can see it, let me get that line nice and smooth) and there that looks pretty good, notice how smooth that line is right now?0283

Bring in just a little up by the ear, so it looks a little more natural...there!0325

Now we want to even up the other side, so I'm going to move the chin sunken area out just a little, and then start working the cheekline just a little (I'm just pushing slightly, very carefully adjusting this) and that looks pretty balanced (maybe just a little bit more over here) and we're going to go ahead and click OK.0331

And I'm going to de-select the...selection, and we're going to go and in our history panel (I'll zoom it up one time) look how nice that looks!0356

We're going to go...before, and after...before and, let's zoom it out now, before, and after--before, and after.0366

It's the same lady--looks like she's a little bit slimmer, and certainly makes her look a little bit younger.0383

Out, and in, and if we look at that area close, and I was very careful when I did it, we have very little pixel distortion--a little smear right here, but it looks nice and clean.0391

So that's one way that this works.0405

Now, let's take a look at another part--this is a characteristic of everybody.0407

You look at the eyes on people, and even look in the mirror at yourself you'll probably see this: her eye which appears to--it's her right eye but we see it on the left, is open more than her left eye which is on the right.0414

Human eyes just--they're not perfectly...exactly the same so what I'd like to do, it kind of looks like her eye is drooping a little bit; let's open the eye up.0428

So let's go back to our marquee tool, select around the eye area and go back to the Liquify Filter under the Distort menu, and we're just going to work on the eye and what I can do--I can either push it up, or let's try the Bloat tool, and see what happens here if we just hit it, ever so slightly.0438

Actually, you know, I'm going to cancel...de-select and I'm going to use that rectangle marquee over both eyes so I can see them both when I do this.0459

Seeing one is not going to help.0469

Now we're back to the liquify filter--zoom it up, and if I hit the Bloat tool right there...you see what happened?0471

The actual pupil of the eye is now too large, so we're going to go back once again to our Warp tool, make the brush size down a little bit, left bracket key come down to get both eyes showing, and we're going to very carefully, across the top line of the eye, just push the eyelid up ever so slightly and just open that eye up a little bit.0480

Notice how we're doing that?0511

So just very carefully--tiny motions at a time--we'll click OK, and now let's hide the crawling ants and go Command+Z, Command+Y, and look at this eye right over here...Command+Z, Command+Y and they're almost the same size right now, looks much better.0513

We could even do it a little bit more so let's go back into the Liquify, zoom it up, and let's go ahead and open that entire eye up...just a tiny bit more.0534

There we go.0552

There, now the eyes look the same; down, up, in fact that one is a little too big so we'll take it where we had it before, and so we went from...there, to there...and opened up the eye again using the Warp tool.0554

Now, what else can we do here?0571

Let's go down and look at the body.0574

Let's take the rectangular marquee tool and we're going to select that part of it.0576

Let's go: Filter, Distort, Liquify and up we come again.0581

Now the first thing we're going to do is we're going to contour her ribcage.0586

Let's take the Warp tool again and we're going to use this one all the way, and we're going to get the brush size up (right bracket) get a decent size brush, and we're going to start by just moving that edge in, very carefully, to get a little bit of contour.0592

We'll move the bust line out...slightly, and we're going to move the rest of it in--we don't need a lot, just enough to make it look good.0611

Let's do the same on this side; we want it to look very natural (bring that just a hair more here).0620

We'll click OK and Command+H, Control+H, look down at the bottom of the image, we'll zoom it up once so you can see it...there we go.0629

Look in the area around here (let me turn that off).0639

Command+Z, Command+Y--Command+Z, Command+Y, we zoom that out you see how that affected the entire image--Command+Z, Command+Y.0643

Let's do that with the history panel so you don't get covered up with that...out, in, just added a little bit of femininity.0653

Now we can do one more thing, we still have that selection--let's go back.0662

Distort, Liquify and here, we're going to try something... give her just a little bit of a bust line--increase her bust size just slightly--not distortion-wise terribly but just a little bit, just to add that glamour touch.0666

We'll just hit it...whoops...way too much.0685

Just a tiny bit...no, that one doesn't even work.0690

What we're going to do is go back to the Warp tool again and just push out, ever so slightly, just to enhance it a tiny, tiny bit.0695

There we go...in, out.0706

Let's go with the in, out...just a little bit right in there and she now looks really great.0709

So now, we've gone from there...to there...isn't that great?0718

OK, that's how the Liquify Filter works--it's under the Filter menu, down to the Distort, Liquify, and we have taken a good look at the Liquify Filter and how it works.0726

Just go in there and experiment with the other tools and see how they work for you; primarily the Warp and Bloat tools are the ones you're going to use but be careful...do them in small increments because what you're doing is smearing pixels and you may have to go back and correct things if you over-do it.0742

And there's how we use it for re-touching people.0759

I'll see you back for the next lesson..."Re-touching People Part 3: More on Skin".0762