I'm looking for recommendations for software (preferably a plugin, but in theme with this request I'm flexible) that makes your image totally plastic, letting you bend, warp, flow, wrap, whatever to your hearts content. But also with controls so that stuff you don't want affected won't be.

Liquify and custom warp in Photoshop don't hack it for me.

Ideas? Suggestions? Recommendations?

Paint Shop Pro's warp mesh and warp brush are pretty good. dont know how they compare to the Photoshop stuff, though. post an image and give me some idea of what you're after and i'll give it a shot with psp's warps.

also, with a bit of clever work, smart morph may be what you're looking for. the trick here would be to load two of the same image but different file names and use the morph features to warp. (never tried this myself, so this may not work like i think. but, smartmorph is free, so no big loss if it doesnt). also, not sure how you'd save out a single image instead of an image morph animation. i'll have to re-install the program and run some tests (still loading back software on the new machine).

craig

Paint Shop Pro that was already mentioned is quite good IMHO. Regarding plugins, KPT Goo was good.

Doug, I'm not sure this is in line with what you're looking for, when I watched the demo video, I got so excited, I just had to pop in here and pass the word.

I haven't been around much lately, so I apologize if everyone has already drooled over this.

Teddy is the name of the app - I think. (http://lazyrussian.com/2006/09/15/freaky-friday-episode-3-teddy/)

Take care, Margaret

Craig:

I'd basically like both a brush and bezier controls that basically let me tug, pull, and bend an image in any way I feel like. Liquify and warp in Photoshop touch on it, but don't really offer the control I'm looking for.

I hate getting off onto specific examples, but take a look at my latest Manipulation Challenge. I had a straight cigarette and a curled bug. Obviously I managed, but it would have been so much easier if I could have simply tugged the cigarette into the shape of the caterpillar.

Margaret:

Yes, I'd seen that, but it is truly cool.

doug,

tugged the cigarette into the shape of the caterpillar. sounds a lot like the warp brush in Paint Shop Pro, though no bezier controls i'm aware of.

have you tried playing with vector graphics and the tools for those? that's the only place i know of in Paint Shop Pro that has the control points you want. and that's an interesting thought; i wonder if warp brush would work in vector mode? i'll have to experiment a bit.

i mentioned smart morph because it does give you control points, but again, not sure how to avoid the convert to animation at the end.

an interesting project. i dont really know of one single brush, filter, editor or plugin that would exactly what you want, but i'll bet it exists.

craig

i looked into this more in Paint Shop Pro. i'm posting two attachments. one is the original, i think by steve conway, posted in the art forums. the second is a silliness i did on this image using just psp's warp brush. the warp brush has adjustments for 'push', 'expand', 'contract', 'twirl right', 'twirl left', 'noise', 'iron out', and 'un-warp'. those are the effect types. there are also settings for size, hardness, strength, step, noise on any given effect. and, 'edge mode', 'draft quality' and 'final apply'. plus, you can import deformation maps.

this last one, deformation maps, might give you the control you want in a non-freehand type of way. but i'm not sure on this one. this is an area of Paint Shop Pro i havent explored much yet.

with mesh warp, you get a sizable grid superimposed over the image. at each node of the grid you can grab that node and move it to warp that part of the image. you can move a node in any direction. the only limit is that you cant pass one node past another. with the grid being sizable you can change the amount of detail you want to alter with any given node grab. it's not bezier, per se, but they are control points.

craig

edit: i also checked to see if warp brush would work in vector mode. i didnt think it would and it doesnt. you'd think vector graphics would be the way to go, though. if you could somehow map your image with vector control points and then just move them around, that would make a great warp tool.

That sounds pretty much like Photoshop's liquify tool, function for function. I find it good for micro work, but not for macro work.

doug,

ok, sounds like what you want is a vector based warp and yes, that would be the ideal warp/liquify. the problem would be converting raster to vector or having vector controls directly impact on raster. tricky. i'd love such a beast also but dont know of one currently.

craig

Supposedly Illustrator has excellent raster warp capability, but I don't own a copy to find out.

Doug, are you thinking of something like the mesh tool in Illustrator?

It looks a bit like the bezier half of what I'm looking for. Can it warp a straight line into a circle or spiral?

yep, if you make a path of the object's outline and map that to the path of shape you want (ie- set up corrasponding anchor points on both paths), similar deal with meshes but with more control. IllustratorCS2 is better at this than the CS version (which is what I have).