Body manipulation

[Brian2]

Let's say I wanna give someone thinner legs. I could use the liquify filter and play around with the different tools there (pucker, warp, turbulence), which gives me the exact result I want. The problem with that is the loss of detail. Areas that have been touched by the liquify filter are blurred because of the moving of the pixels. Does anyone have any tips on how to succesfully make legs (or other bodyparts) thinner (or bigger) while retaining detail? Muchos gracias!

[Godmother]

If you make a new layer with the original texture of the skin, use liquify on you original layer and then overlay the texture back.

Maybe you can post one of the image you want to edit, so we can try diferent things.

[berko1021]

When I need to thin a leg or body part, first I usually try the pinch filter to see if that works, then I will use the liquify for anything additional that needs to be done.

Select the area, feather it a bit, and go to filter->distort->pinch, and use a positive number. Keep going up to see what works without looking to artificial. Then use the liquify for anything extra.

[mistermonday]

Liquify on a duplicate layer then apply a layer mask to brush back in parts of the orig layer to restore the original texture where possible.
Another technique is to select an area and use the Transform tool set to a reduction / enlargement % to modify the lentg or width and then use the clone tool to repair the gaps which are left. This works well on some images (for example making a person thinner).
Regards,
Murray

[PatrickB]

I'd be interested in the way you use the liquifier? If you use masks and make only straightforward strokes the blur should be down to a not noticeable minimum!

[Daviskw]

Another tip for liquify is always use the largest brush you can... the larger the better. It may mean a few trips to the filter but with a large brush as Patrick says the blurring should be negligible.

Butch

[Littlecoo]

I often use the healing brush (or clone tool) and/or some good ol' dodge 'n burn to fix unflattering bulges. I have come up against 'puffiness' in faces etc resulting from incorrect lighting and flash and just some careful use of the burn tool to bring back some definition and depth to facial features does the trick. I also like to use the healing brush (no special reason really, just my personal preference). In my example I made duplicate layer, set a slightly softened healing brush to replace, sampled the edge of the arm with some shirt included, painted where I wanted the new edge to be, sampled and healed some more to clean up the job, the did some dodge and burn to correct shadows and hightlights.

[Brian2]

@PatrickB: The blurring isn't significant, but the problem lies with textures like jeans. After only one stroke you'll lose the original texture. I'm gonna give the layer duplicate to bring back texture a try.

@berko1021: I used to use shear and spherize for manipulating bodyparts in certain ways, that always seemed to do the trick but it took considerably more work than using the liquify tool. Thanks for the pinch tip, didn't use that one yet.

[KR1156]

I think the liquify filter works wonders quickly, but not the best route for high-end work, or something that will print fairly large. To maintain 100% original texture / patterns / or grain...i would recomend drawing paths to your liking, mask out he area you want to slim, then do clone work to replace the information you tranformed or deleted.

One thing to be careful of....if you slim down skin areas like thighs or arms, the more you cut into it the more shdaow / highlight you lose.....you'll have to D&B that info back in on the edges to give contour.

[Brian2]

Originally Posted by KR1156

i would recomend drawing paths to your liking, mask out he area you want to slim, then do clone work to replace the information you tranformed or deleted.

Could you give me some step by step help with the 'drawing paths and mask out the area'? Thanks!

[KR1156]

I had trouble finding a a decent shot with texture in the bkgd.

Here's a quick example i did for you…

••pic 1 shows the path that you would make, to reshape the woman's thigh.
-you're basically going to trim off that area inside the path, by cloning the bkgd over it. Your cloning skills will determine how natural this looks.

••Pic 2 shows that i made a clone layer, that's where you'll clone the bkgd info over the thigh. (this way your original is still intact incase you need to reshape the path to someones taste.) Turn your path into a selection so you don't clone past the area you are targeting.

••Pic 3 now shows the new thigh shape with the cloning i did over it. Looks flat and ugly and pretty obvious.

••Pic 4 shows the D&B layer i used to bring back some shadow and contour. You can do that with whatever method you are comfortable with.

I suck at writing directions on how to do things, much better in person....so let me know if theres anything that's confusing.

hope this helps!

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by Brian2

The blurring isn't significant, but the problem lies with textures like jeans. After only one stroke you'll lose the original texture. I'm gonna give the layer duplicate to bring back texture a try.

I don't have any problem with texture other than what you'd expect--ie., if the texture pattern is less than 2 pixels across and you compress it then naturally you'd expect loss of detail because you are effectively downsizing it. If that's your problem, then upsize your image before using liquify.

Bart

[Brian2]

Originally Posted by bart_hickman

I don't have any problem with texture other than what you'd expect--ie., if the texture pattern is less than 2 pixels across and you compress it then naturally you'd expect loss of detail because you are effectively downsizing it. If that's your problem, then upsize your image before using liquify.

Bart

I tried that, it's a great tip and seems to work quite well so far. How many percent do you recommend I upsize the picture?

@KR1156: Thanks for laying that down in steps, I tried it and works great. The only problem I'm having now is creases in clothing, but I guess that can be fixed by spending some more minutes on the picture

[pctalent]

A couple of years ago, our singer at the time was not pleased with the way she looked in a photo that a guy took of us when we were playing at a festival in Houston. She asked me "Can you please make my legs thinner?" This was going to be a flyer for our next gig, and to tell you the truth, I didn't really notice anything unflattering about her legs, but she was serious; she begged me to do something to make her legs thinner. Well, I zoomed in on 'em and I started with her left thigh and I selected some of it and just moved it over to start with. Then I did the other side of the leg, and moved down and did her lower legs the same way. After doing her right leg the same way, I got the clone stamp out and worked around the area till it was all filled in. I also did a very light smoothing over it with the blur tool. She was happy. The liquifying, burning and layer mask concepts to me are fascinating and creative. Thanks for those posts, I will try them next time I get something like this. John
Amy, before and after.

[roger_ele]

My assistant loves the liquify tool ... I never have ... lol

This is what I find real quick and easy (I use photoshop);

- make a selection a little larger than the area you want to change the shape of - think ahead on the size of the area to include good blending/transition areas, but not any larger.

- Control-J to copy selection to new layer

- Control-T to Transform layer - if you have CS2 right click and select warp - tug and pull and you are done - if not CS2, hold down the Control key while grabbing any of the tranform 'handles' and push and pull to get the shape you want. Mask this layer and paint on the mask to blend.

Sometimes this can be done in one fell swoop, sometimes in smaller steps.

A perfect example of this technique is removing a double chin ... select the double chin area, control-j, mask out the face area down to the lower chin, control-t and stretch the lower chin up to the upper chin. Now you have the shadow of the lower chin blending off of the jaw line and hiding the area in between ;0)

best of luck,
roger