Melted and Warped

GOAL

Use Photoshop’s image distortion tools – especially Liquify and Pinch – to distort a famous face into something that looks almost, but not quite, real.

You will turn two files.

your name your class period melted.psd - your work file

your name your class period melted.jpg - your flattened image

Example: If your name is Joe Smith and you are in period 3, your files will be named

Joe Smith P3 melted.psd

Joe Smith P3 melted.jpg

INSTRUCTIONS

• Use Google image search to find a large (school appropriate!) picture of a famous person. Here’s how:
• Go to http://images.google.com
• Enter the name of the person. I’m searching for Chris Pratt. Google will show a LOT of pictures, but most of them won’t work. You need a picture that is large and mostly face. The good news: Google will let us search for only large images!
• Under the search bar, click Search Tools. A new submenu will appear. Click Size on the new menu and select Large.
  
• Find a picture that clearly shows the person’s face. Choose an image where they are not being silly- you will be adding the silly!
• Click on the picture. A larger version of the picture will appear. To the right of the picture will be two buttons. Click the button labelled View Image. An even larger version of the image will probably appear. If the picture doesn’t load, or a different page or image appears, go back and try a different image.
• Hold down control and click the image. A menu will appear.
• Click Save Image As.
• Change the name of the file to the name of the person and save the image.
• Open Photoshop.
• Choose File/New
• Make a new image with width 7.5 inches, height 10 inches, and 150 pixels/inch.
  
• Open the picture of the famous person.
• Choose the move tool.
• Drag the picture of the person onto the blank document.
• Close the original picture of the famous person.
• Double click “Layer 1” on the layer palette and change the name of the layer to the name of the person.
• Your famous person’s face is probably the wrong size. Fix it by using the Transform tool (command-T). Click and drag the handles around the edge of image to adjust the size. When the person’s face fills most of the image, press return.
• Now we have to do a little trick. Even though you can’t see it, Photoshop remembers the parts of the picture that are not visible on the screen. If we don’t get rid of them, our warp tool will do some strange stuff. So, do this:
• Hold down command and click the thumbnail (the little picture) on the picture layer.
  
• The marching ants should be doing their march around the edge of the image. On the top menu, select Image/Crop. That will cut off anything not visible.
• Press command-D to get rid of the ants.
• Copy the face layer to a new layer. The easiest way to do that is by pressing command-J.
• Rename the layer (person’s name) warp. You should now have three layers, like this:
  

Now that the boring setup stuff is done, let’s get to the melting and warping!

There are a ton of ways to alter an image, but we’re just going to look at two filters: Pinch and Liquify.

Pinch is the simpler of the two. Imagine that your picture is printed on a sheet of rubber. If you were to pinch the image from the back and pull it backward, what would it look like if you were looking at it straight on? What if you were to take that same picture and strtch it by pushing from the back? That’s what pinch does. To try it, click filter/distort/pitch. You control how much distrtion there is in the image. If you have selected a smaller area of the image, only the selected area will by effected. Here are a few examples:

100	50	0	-50	-100

Liquify is much more complex. It’s like several warping tools stuck together. It works by creating a mesh- an overlayed warped grid- that gets applied to the image. And an important thing to know about Liquify is that it doesn’t save your changes until you press okay.

Let’s play with it! Click filter/liquify.

A new window will open. Your image will be in the middle. The right side of the screen has controls for the size and shape of your brush, and visibility of the images, layers other than the one your working on, the mesh, and masked areas.

The left side has a menu with each tool.

Forward Warp (the finger) pushes the part of the image under the brush. If you try to move too quickly it will make streaks. Move slowly, and click and release frequently.

Reconstruct (The brush) returns the mesh under the brush to its original square shape.

Twirl Clockwise (the swirl) does exactly that – warps the mesh under the brush in a clockwise twirl.

Pucker and Bloat (the buttons with the arrows pushing into and pulling out of a shape) work like the Pinch filter, pulling in or pushing out the mesh.

Push Left is odd. It pushes the pixels to the left in relation to the direction of the brush. If the brush goes up, the pixels move left. If the brush goes down, the pixels move right. If the brush goes left, pixels go down.

Mirror (reflected triangles) reflects whatever is to the “left” (same as above) of the brush.

Turbulence (waves) is much like Forward Warp, but adds some jitter so the warp is not as smooth.

Freeze Mask marks areas that you want to remain unchanged. As long as an area is under a mask, none of the warp tools will have an effect. You may see the mask as red drawings on top of the image, but those lines are only there to show the area of the mask. They do not remain on the picture!

Thaw Mask removes masks.

The Hand does not draw. It’s used to move to a different part of an image if the entire image is not on the screen.

Zoom (magnifying glass) lets you zoom in and out on the image. It does not change the actual size of the image- it just lets you look closer. Clicking on the image will zoom in. Holding down option when clicking zooms out.

There are a lot of ways to use the liquify tools. Experiment! You can always reconstruct the image. Eve if you accidentally save at the wrong time, you can always make a fresh copy of the original layer and start again.

IMPORTANT: Your picture will not be warped until you press the okay button. If you choose “save mesh,” it will not change the picture! “Save mesh” should only be used if you want to use the mesh later. You might do it if you have started warping an image, and want to finish on another day.

Save your project as a Photoshop image AND as a jpeg, and turn in both.

A couple of samples to guide you:

This is an acceptable warp:

This is an unacceptable (even though it’s funny) warp:

Remember: Take you time. Play with it. Make it look weird, but possible!

GRADING

9-10: Multiple significant but subtle changes to the face. Changes are difficult or impossible to find without looking at the original picture.

8: Multiple significant changes to the face. Changes are fairly difficult to find without looking at the original picture.

7: Several significant changes to the face. Changes are slightly difficult to find without looking at the picture.