Adobe recently announced a new addition to our mobile apps - Photoshop Fix. Fix is aptly named - it's all about retouching and pixel pushing, with controls for cropping, image adjustment, healing, smoothing, painting, blurring, vignetting and even liquifying.
I've been playing around with a pre-release version of Fix on my iPad (also available on the iPhone) and I thought I'd share a series of info-torials outlining some of the aspects of Fix. In this project, we're going to look Liquify - and specifically, facial recognition.
In Project 1, we used some of the correction tools for cleaning up and improving an image. Coming soon, a project showing a workflow between Photoshop Mix and Photoshop Fix.
Note: My workflow here varies (and I'll be more specific in each example), but generally starts in Lightroom Mobile and then moves to PS Mix or PS Fix, or both. Chances are though, that you might find yourself accessing images from your camera roll, instead.
The release version of Fix will also be on the iPhone, where I do the majority of my mobile photography.
Choosing an image
In this example I have access to tools that aren't even in Photoshop yet; Liquify facial recogonition for editing purposes.
The Liquify filter in Photoshop and PS Fix can do some pretty funky things to a picture, but my concern is in it's more practical uses - in other words, good old digital plastic surgery. And to ensure I offend no one but myself, I will only use photos of me in this project.
I have a shot of me, taken many moons ago and while it's a decent pic, direct flash tends to flatten contours and as a result, make a face appear a little - umm - wider.
In this example, I accessed the photo from my Facebook account, directly from within Fix. I did this by clicking the "+" icon on the left of the app, and choosing Facebook. If you've never done this before, you will have to authorize the app through FB first.
I browsed by profile pics and found the image you see below.
Start by selecting Liquify from the main task bar at the bottom of the app.
Note: Currently, Liquify flattens all your edits except Crop and Vignette. There are plans to make this even less destructive in a future update. For now, though, you are shown a prompt the very first time you enter Liquify and have done any of the edits other than Crop and Vignette, warning you about this operation.
Young and charming as I was, direct flash can be unflattering in a photo. PS Fix can help though.
Choose the Face option. Fix works best with straight on faces. Profiles (and pets) are not recognized.
Choose the Face tool from the Liquify taskbar.
Once Face is selected, if the image has a recognizable face (remember, no profiles or pets), An array of control points appear over major facial areas: eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks and chin. Tapping on different control points brings up a set of context controls.
Tapping on different control points brings up different sets of context controls. For example, tapping on a cheek control point brings up options to alter Face Distortion (from a wide angle lens being too close - hello, selfie), Width, Jawline and Chin.
Once you tap on one of the context controls, you adjust that area of the face by dragging a simple slider up or down. It's obvious pretty quickly which direction is the best for your particular photo.
In this photo, I simply went with a slightly more youthful (ahem, thinner) version of my face, slimming down the nose, face width and stretching the chin a little lower. Subtle changes are the key. Unless that is, you want to make a total mess of things for fun.
And umm, we would never do anything like that. We're, like, professionals, right?
When you're done, tap the checkmark to return to the main interface. From there, you can apply other corrections if needed (healing, color, defocus, etc) and then you can save the file back to your Camera Roll, or even send it to Photoshop for more detailed edits.
Reminder: Facial recognition edits affect the original image at the pixel level, and unlike other edits in Fix, are not placed in a separate layer.
Other Examples
I've included a couple other before/after shots below, to show you how even subtle changes can make a difference.
I was impressed that the facial recognition worked, even though I was wearing sunglasses.
This final version includes some extra edits - blurring the background and lessening os a few wrinkles in the forehead and neck. Sadly, little can be done about my hair...
Wrap up
Well, I think we can face the fact that the Face tool in Liquify is not just some gimmicky special effects filter. Sure, you can go crazy, but you can also concentrate on making subtle changes, correcting things as pervasive as lens distortion in a smart phone selfie. I think that separates Fix is more of a pro tool (or at least serious amateur tool), than a toy.
And there's a lot more to explore! I have one more project queued up for this series, where we will look at how Lightroom, Photoshop Mix and Photoshop Fix can all work together using Creative Sync. But that, as they say, is another story.