Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual

Super Slimmers

Photoshop has a slew of tools you can use to do some serious slimming, letting you fix flabby chins, shrink paunchy waistlines, and instantly shave off pounds. Tools of the body-sculpting trade include the Pinch and Liquify filters, the Clone Stamp tool, and more, all explained in this section. Read on!

Fixing Flabby Chins

You can suck the life out of a flabby chin with the Pinch filter. Sure it sounds gross, but it makes a huge difference and takes mere seconds. All you have to do is make a rough selection—the Lasso tool (Using the Lasso Tools) works well—that includes the flab and some of the surrounding details, as shown in Figure 10-9 (bottom left). Then choose Filter→Distort→Pinch and, in the resulting dialog box, enter 100 in the Amount field, and then click OK. If you need to pinch it a little more, press ⌘-F (Ctrl+F on a PC) to run the filter again. Easy, huh?

Tip

As you'll learn in this chapter, filters are destructive (they alter your image's pixels), but you can protect your original image if you duplicate the image layer first by pressing ⌘-J (Ctrl+J on a PC). Or flip over to The Joy of Smart Filters to get the scoop on running filters nondestructively by using Smart Filters.

Liquifying Bulges

Drastic bulges call for drastic action, and the Liquify filter is as drastic as it gets in Photoshop. This filter lets you push, pull, and pucker pixels any which way you want. You can use it to get your waistline under control, add a smile, enlarge lips, and so on (see ...