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Dan Rodney/3 min read

Fashion Shot: Liquify Retouching

Photoshop Workflow

1

Open & Inspect

File → Open. Check resolution, color mode, and bit depth.

2

Build a Layer Stack

Stack adjustments and effects on separate layers — never edit pixels directly.

3

Apply Targeted Edits

Use masks to limit each layer to the part of the image that needs it.

4

Export for Output

File → Export → choose JPG/PNG/PSD based on the destination.

Master Photoshop at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Photoshop Bootcamp covers retouching, compositing, color correction, and pro editing.

Learn integral Photoshop skills such as the Liquify filter and advanced retouching techniques with this comprehensive tutorial, offering step-by-step guidance and practical exercises to help you perfect your image editing abilities.

Topics Covered in This Photoshop Tutorial:

The Liquify Filter: the Bloat, Pucker, & Forward Warp Tools, Artistically Retouching Facial Features

Exercise Preview

model liquify before&after

Exercise Overview

In our image the model’s mouth and eyes are uneven. We can make her smaller eye larger, and make her mouth nice and even.

Some cool Face-Aware Liquify features were added in Photoshop CC 2015.5, but they do very specific things. For example it can change eye width and height, but it changes both eyes. It can move the upper lip, but not in the exact way we need to for this photo. These features can be useful in some cases, but not for what we want to do to this photo. In this exercise you’ll learn a couple ways to use Liquify’s tools for more specific control.

Evening Out the Size of the Eyes

  1. If it’s not already open, go into the Photoshop Adv Class folder and open yourname-model.psd.
  2. In the Channels panel, make sure you are viewing the RGB composite channel and that it is selected.
  3. Go to Filter > Liquify.
  4. Choose the Bloat tool bloat tool.
  5. In the settings on the right, choose a big enough Brush Size to cover most of the eye and a lower Brush Rate so changes don’t happen too fast.
  6. Click as needed on the left eye to make it bigger.
  7. To open up the eye instead of making it bigger, choose the Forward Warp tool warp tool.
  8. Drag on the top or bottom of the eye to move those parts.
  9. Use the Pucker tool pucker tool to make the right eye smaller.
  10. If you don’t like the change, use Edit > Undo (or Edit > Step Backward) to undo the changes.

  11. To see your progress, let’s see a before and after:

    • Click the Restore All button.
    • Then hit Cmd–Z (Mac) or CTRL–Z (Windows) over and over again to flip between the before and after.
    • Make sure you have the changes applied before preceding to the next step.

Evening Out Her Lips

Her lips aren’t quite a mirror image of one another. She has a bit of a snarl. Let’s make it more even.

  1. Choose the Forward Warp tool warp tool.
  2. Adjust the Brush Size appropriately for the lip area. It should be big enough to cover a good portion of the right half of a lip.
  3. On the right side of her top lip, drag up to raise the lip, making it match the curve of the left side to eliminate some of the snarl.
  4. Raise up the right side of her bottom lip, making it match the curve of the left side.
  5. Click OK when you like what you’ve done.
  6. Save the file, then close it.