How To Manipulate 3 Images With Puppet Warp In Photoshop

I’m going to show you how to manipulate Images with puppet warp in Photoshop. With puppet warp in photoshop you to distort images by dragging points. Puppet Warp in photoshop can be very useful for many distortions, such as shaping hair and repositioning body parts.

Hello, everybody. My name is Charles. In today’s video, I’m gonna show you how to manipulate images with Puppet Warp in Photoshop. So Puppet Warp is one of the main tools to use if you’re going to heavily manipulate the shape of an object. It allows you to make large adjustments to one area while leaving the other areas relatively in tact.

Isolating Your Subject to Use Puppet Warp In Photoshop

So the first thing, when working with Puppet Warp, is to isolate your subject. So in this example, my subject is this giraffe that’s on this right-hand side of the image and I cut him out and I put him on his own layer with a layer mask. When I first started out, I made a copy of my background there and then on that copy of the layer, and I call it Content-Aware Fill Layer because I used the Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop to fill in where I had cut out the subject. So in other words, this is what it looks like with the Content-Aware Fill, and that is because when I go to put all my points and manipulate my top layer, which is the subject, I won’t still see the layer below. So it goes back to best practices of making a copy of your background layer. I didn’t wanna work on my background layer in case I needed to go back to it. Here is the Content-Aware Fill layer where I filled in where the subject was, and now here’s the subject layer.

So the subject layer is where we’re going to do the Puppet Warp. I am going to change the subject layer into a Smart Object, and that way, when I’m working on my Puppet Warp, if I need to go back and change anything, I could do it with the Smart Object. The Puppet Warp command allows us to distort and image by clicking and dragging pins, which distort the pixels to which they are attached.

Apply The Distortion Pins to Use Puppet Warp In Photoshop

So now that we’ve isolated the subject, which is this giraffe, we need to add distortion pins so that we can start manipulating the pixels in the image. So I’m gonna select the subject layer, which is the giraffe. I’m gonna come up here to Edit, Puppet Warp. So now we can use the Puppet Warp tool. And notice, when we were in the tool, we need to actually click somewhere on the mesh. This mesh here, you can turn it on and off up here on the Options bar on the top, but it just allows you to have a visual of where you can put certain points. So these points are called pins. So let’s say we put a pin right here. You see me click and it made a white dot. That is a pin, and that’s where you can either drag or keep that as an area that will stay stable. And I’ll show you what I mean.

Adjusting Pins and Distorting the Image – Puppet Warp In Photoshop

If I put another point up here on his head. And now I have two points, so if I select that point and I click and drag, it’s moving the whole giraffe, so here’s something to note. I’ll hit Command + Z to undo that. You need to anchor points, or you need to put pins. So in this case, if I put pins down by his feet, let me put four pins down there, and then I come up here to the top, select that pin, and then move it. Just the top portion of his body is going to move. So distortion pins, or pins, could be used to anchor points on your subject, or it could be used to actually move certain areas of your subject. That’s something to be aware of. Make sure that you need to put in anchor points where you don’t want areas to move.

Options Bar Settings – Puppet Warp In Photoshop

But just to explain up here, Density on the Options bar, if you put it to fewer points, you’ll get fewer mesh points. Or you can come up here to More Points and you’ll have a lot of ’em. It’s probably best to use it for normal in most cases. Up here on the Options bar, if I put Expansion to say 49, it’s going to increase the outer area of the mesh. For most examples, you would probably keep that at say something like two pixels, unless you see a lot of jagged edges and things like that. So again, just showing you what Expansion was about, so I’m gonna put this back down to two. So mode, normal, density, normal, expansion, two pixels, show the mesh. And those values should be good for you to go for puppet warp in Photoshop

So some shortcuts for you here. If you click on a point and you hit the Delete key, that’s one way to delete it. Press down Alt on PC and Command on Mac and you see that the cursor turns to a scissors, and then click, that deletes it also. If I wanna select all my pins at once, hit Control + A on PC Command + A on a Mac. All my pins are selected. If I want to deselect all my pins at once, Control + D on a PC, Command + D on a Mac. They’re all deselected. If I wanna select multiple pins, I press the Shift key and just click on the pin. If I hold down the H key, that hides all the pins. And if I wanted to rotate a pin, I click on it, move away from it, hold Alt on PC, Option on Mac. And as you can see, it turns into a double-sided arrow and I can rotate like this. So now if I wanna grab this top pin, and I’m gonna pull this guy just like this. Press down the Alt key, PC, Option key on Mac, and rotate up. Something like that. If I hit the Escape key to cancel the distortions, and it goes back to where it was, canceling everything for puppet warp in photoshop.

Again, anchoring all the points. Grab one and pull it to where you want and click the checkmark to commit. And on my subject layer, there’s a Smart filter called Puppet Warp, and turn this off. There’s the before, there’s the after. I can double-click on the Puppet Warp filter effect. When I go back in, I have everything in tack. I have all my pins. I can add pins, delete pins, reposition them. Click OK so I can go back in and make those changes anyway I want.

So Puppet Warp is good for moving limbs, arms, legs somebody’s head. So in this example here, I’ve already cut out the subject from the background and I made the subject layer a Smart Object. So now I need to go into Puppet Warp to add my pins. So with the subject layer selected, come up here to Edit, Puppet Warp. The first thing I wanna do is anchor with some pins down here and place some pin on both her shoes, even on this baggage that she’s pulling. I put a pin say in the middle of her waist. I think I want to move her arm so that she’s got her gimbal and move it closer to her face, so I’m gonna put a pin on her elbow and say one at the top of this gimbal. And even one at the top of her head. Sometimes you have to experiment with some of these points and try ’em out and see if they actually work for you for puppet warp in photoshop.

So first, let’s try and rotate this pin on her elbow. I’m gonna select this pin. I’m gonna hit Alt or Option and my cursor turns into double-sided arrow. And that’s not gonna work. So we won’t do that, I’ll undo that. Instead, I’ll drag this top pin, so I’ll select it and pull it. And that seems to be working better. And then on to select the pin on the top of her head and I can move it up or back, so I’ll move it back a little bit. And click the checkmark to commit the changes. There’s the before, and there’s the after. So some slight changes, but it just gives you an idea of what you can do. First of all, cut out your subject, make sure you don’t forget to put the anchor pins, and then kind of play with pins that you put in different areas to see if you can manipulate them to give you the desired result for puppet warp in photoshop.

So in this example her head is tilted a little bit to the side, which there’s nothing wrong with that, just in this particular example, I just wanna show you that you can, in case maybe you’re retouching and somebody has a slight head tilt and you want to straighten it out, maybe at their request, so let’s do that here. So I’ve already got this image cut out from the background. The subject is on its own layer and layer mask. And I’m gonna create a Smart Object out of this, and go into Edit, Puppet Warp. And I have my mesh for puppet warp in photoshop.

The first thing I wanna do is anchor her body, so I’m gonna put a pin there, say one on the shoulder, one on the other shoulder, on right maybe in the middle of the neck, one on her chin, and say one at the top of her head. And the one at the top of her head is the one that I wanna try and move. So I’m gonna try and just move this slowly, not too much, something like that. And then click the checkmark.

So I have my Smart filter and the Puppet Warp effect. If I disable that, there is the before. Enable it, there is the after. So a subtle change. Like I say, nothing wrong with somebody’s head a little tilted in a photo, it just shows character, but I just wanted to show you that if you need to do that type of a manipulation of a photo, that you can do it, but the key in all of this is to separate the subject from the background so that you can manipulate it. But some key things to remember, again, is always anchor your image with pins, and of course, first separate your subject from the background, and that is key for puppet warp in photoshop.

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See the previous article here 👉 https://charlescabrera.com/how-to-add-shadows-in-photoshop/