Liquify effect

The Liquify effect lets you push, pull, rotate, enlarge, and shrink areas in a layer. Several Liquify tools distort the brush area when you hold down the mouse button or drag. The distortion is concentrated at the center of the brush area, and the effect intensifies as you hold down the mouse button or repeatedly drag over an area.

You can limit the area of a layer you distort by using Freeze Area Mask. Use the Reconstruction mode to lessen or undo distortions you’ve created.

The Liquify effect can extend beyond the boundaries of the target layer. This extension is useful when the target layer is smaller than the composition.

This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.

Original (upper-left), and with variations of Liquify applied (lower-left and right)

Andrew Kramer provides a video tutorial on his Video Copilot website that demonstrates the use of the Liquify effect to distort (morph) a human face into the face of a demon.

Mask properties

Freeze Area Mask
Determines the area of the image in which mask opacity and feather settings affect the distortion. Areas outside the mask are distorted; areas within the mask are distorted according to Mask Opacity and Mask Feather settings.

Mask Opacity
Determines how the distortion affects the area within the mask. If Mask Opacity is set to 100%, the distortion doesn’t affect the area within the mask; if it’s set to 50%, the area within the mask is somewhat affected. If you set Mask Opacity to 100%, make sure to feather the mask to prevent jagged edges on the mask.

Mask Feather
The width of the feather used to blend pixels between the masked area and the nonmasked area.

Tools

Warp
Pushes pixels forward as you drag.

Turbulence
Smoothly scrambles pixels. This setting is useful for creating fire, clouds, waves, and similar effects.

Twirl Clockwise
Rotates pixels clockwise as you hold down the mouse button or drag.

Twirl Counterclockwise
Rotates pixels counterclockwise as you hold down the mouse button or drag.

Pucker
Moves pixels toward the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.

Bloat
Moves pixels away from the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.

Shift Pixels
Moves pixels perpendicular to the stroke direction.

Reflection
Copies pixels to the brush area.

Clone
Copies the distortions from around a source location to the current mouse location. Set the source location by Alt-clicking (Windows) or Option-clicking (Mac OS) the source point.

Reconstruction
Reverses distortions or applies them in different ways.

Distort an image with the Liquify effect

  1. Select the layer, and choose Effect > Distort > Liquify.
  2. In the Layer panel, create a mask to freeze areas of the image, and then set mask properties.
  3. In the Effect Controls panel do the following:

    • Choose the mask you created from the Freeze Area Mask pop-up menu.

    • Specify a brush size and brush pressure. A low brush pressure makes changes occur more slowly, so it’s easier to stop them at exactly the right moment.

    • Specify a turbulent jitter to control how tightly the Turbulence tool scrambles pixels.

    • Select View Mesh under the View Options control.

    • Set a distortion mesh offset if desired.

    • Drag the Distortion Percentage slider to specify the amount of distortion.

  4. Use the tools to distort the preview of the image.
  5. Use the Reconstruction tool to fully or partially reverse the distortions or to change the image in new ways.

Undo distortions with the Liquify effect

Use the Reconstruction tool and its modes to reverse distortions or redo them in new ways.

  1. Select the Reconstruction tool, and then choose a mode from the Reconstruction Mode pop-up menu:
    Revert
    Changes unfrozen areas back to their predistorted state.

    Displace
    Reconstructs unfrozen areas to match the displacement at the starting point for the reconstruction. You can use Displace to move all or part of the preview image to a different location.

    Amplitwist
    Reconstructs unfrozen areas to match the displacement, rotation, and overall scaling that exist at the starting point.

    Affine
    Reconstructs unfrozen areas to match all local distortions that exist at the starting point, including displacement, rotation, horizontal and vertical scaling, and skew.

  2. Drag the area to restore. The restoration occurs more quickly at the brush center.