How Much Is Too Much?

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program. THE BEST, for me at least. A lot can be done with Photoshop, either to enhance your photos or to create digital arts like banners and posters. It is simply known as Photoshop, or PS to some. Due to its popularity, PS has become both a verb and a generalized trademark for graphics editing software. Read Wiki for more.

For example,

Friend: Eh, how come you look nice here ah?

Me: Oh, I PSed a bit.

Which also means, “Oh, I edited the picture a little bit.”

My friend, SY, sent me some few before and after pictures of random people edited using Photoshop in an email a few days ago.

(**Disclaimer: SY and I do not know who the people in the pictures are, nor do we know who edited these pictures at the first place. )

Picture 1:

Picture 2:

Picture 3:

Picture 4:

Picture 5:

Picture 6:

So, basically pictures 1 to 6 are easy. The techniques used to edit those pictures are:

• healing brush to cover little flaws like eye bags, brown spots, wrinkle lines and small zits.
• brightness and contrast to increase sharpness and lighten the skin.
• liquify tool to push in the jaw to make it smaller.

I’ve discussed these 3 techniques in my previous post.

Let’s talk about other tools this time. Have you heard about the pucker tool and bloat tool? As the name indicates, pucker tool moves objects within the brush closer to the center of that brush area, making it skinnier, while the bloat tool moves objects further from the center, widening it. Bloat tool is the exact opposite of pucker tool.

Where can I find these tools in PS?

Select Filter then click on Liquify. Then a new window will open up, you will see Pucker and Bloat Tool on the left.

Also attached in the email that I got from SY, these 3 pictures were included.

Picture A:

Picture B:

Picture C:

Upon looking at those 3 pictures, I was like, WOW! I was amazed because there were such major difference between the before and after pictures. However, I spot one similarity in all these 3 pictures; the eyes.

The eyes are either bigger or wider in the after picture compared to the ones in the before picture. Also, in the after pictures for  A and B, the lips are smaller than what it should be.

So how did they do it? Yerp, thanks to the pucker and bloat tool.

I have to say, the person who edited these pictures is very good. Bravo! Not wanting to lose because I think I am also not bad what~ (angkat bakul sendiri ), I tried to edit the original pictures and yeah it was tough but I think I did ok.

I managed to edit picture A and B according to the ones sent in the email but I failed for picture C. Because of the word “FANS” at the bottom there, I tried to remove it using cloning but then it distorts the colors at the chin. Then, I malas already. Hence, I can only explain picture A and B.

For picture A, first I edited the brightness and contrast of the picture to make it sharper and lighter. Then using liquify: forward wrap tool (circled in red), I pushed the jaws inside to make it smaller.

After that, I used the bloat tool to widen the eyes. Basically, for bloat tool you only need to select the suitable brush size, move the pointer towards the eye area and just click a few times until you get the desired width/bloat that you want.

After I was done with the eyes, I select the lips area using polygonal lasso tool (circled in red in the picture below). Then using hue and saturation, I gave a hint of lipstick to the lips.

Next, I used the pucker tool to make the nose smaller.

And I get this:

It’s a little bit different from the one I got from the email, but basically that’s how to do it. What do you think?

We move on  to picture B now.

Like picture A, I first changed the brightness and contrast to make the picture lighter. Then again, with the liquify: forward wrap tool (red circle) I pushed the jaws inside.

Next, I used the bloat tool to widen and make the eyes bigger.

I added some eyeliner too, using the techniques discussed before.

Then, with the help of the pucker tool, I made the lips smaller. Come to think of it, the name (pucker tool) suits its function. You know, like when we say, “Hey, pucker up your lips!” when taking vain photos and we start making our lips small and pushing it a bit to front in a position when we’re about to kiss something.

Anyway, pucker tool to make the lips smaller.

And walla, I got these; the before and after pictures.

Like I mentioned before, I failed at editing picture C, would anyone want to give it a try? It could be fun!

OH BTW, someone asked me this:

someone: Can you make people more buffed using PS?

me: I never did that before, but I’ll give it a try. Why?

someone: Yala, I want also. You always show how to make people skinnier but I also want to know how to make people more buffed.

me: HAHA. ok. If I know how, I’ll let you know.

And guess what someone, I found out how to do it, might post it up someday.