Liquify vs Warp?

[desimira]

Hello,

I'm new to the forum. This is my second post

I'm new to retouching as well. I have a question for you guys.

When do you use Liquify and when do you use Warp? Is there like a rule?
What will you use to slim body or to shape the face on a picture?

Thank you!

[edgework]

Liquify is a glorified smudge tool. It pushes pixels around and you can quickly lose definition if you work an area too much.

Warp interpolates based on the mesh distortions. Same as when Photoshop resizes.

I find that warp really isn't great for fine detail, for all that. Pushing and pulling edges, whether clothing or body fat, still works better in Liquify.

[desimira]

Good explanation! Thank you for the response, edgework.

[Steve13]

I generally use warp for distorting text, especially if I want it to fit into a certain shape.

[edgework]

Exactly. Warp gives you nice seamless curves, whereas for a task like that, liquify would be a nightmare trying to make it look smooth and uniform.

[kav]

I do end up using both personally. There has never been a perfect solution to reshaping. Before liquify you had things like shear and pinch to provide similar functions. Puppet warp and smart objects do show promise in this regard

I wanted to add on to this. With liquify it's easy to work yourself into a corner where you know the result will really stretch the pixels too far and cause a significant detail loss or mess up a nice smooth line. You have tools to backtrack or clean up the mesh in liquify but they're really rudimentary. When you first mask then rebuild you have to be sure (well most of the time) that you're not breaking other areas. The image you see in liquify isn't precisely what you're going to get. Sometimes pushing in an area you end up with little bits of waviness.

Personally with ripples in clothing I don't solve these in liquify. I make layers and shear, warp, or rebuild for that kind of little stuff. Where liquify can be useful (even then not always) is when you're trying to build a specific shape with a lot of fine detailing. Say you want to bring in someone's waist. Warp can do a nice job but if it requires a lot of little refinements to the curvature to match the look that you want, you end up making a lot of different warp adjustments to get this to varying selection sizes, with no way to record anything here comparable to a mesh to track the work. I'm starting to really like puppet warp personally. With any of this stuff if you're dealing with a really complex background, it will require a full clipping path if you want significant reshaping to blend perfectly.

[kav]

Originally Posted by edgework

Exactly. Warp gives you nice seamless curves, whereas for a task like that, liquify would be a nightmare trying to make it look smooth and uniform.

Also agree with that from personal experience.