Photoshop is highly regarded for its powerful filter effects. These permit you to alter your imagery in a manner of stylised fashions, and present you with hours of fun when incorporating them into your compositions. An innovative example is the Liquify tool. This filter is both practical and fun in its functionality, and lets you distort and retouch imagery with a sophisticated degree of control.

To access the Liquify filter, simply select Filter>Liquify. Liquify fundamentally enables you to push, pull, rotate, reflect, pucker and bloat any given image. It does so through a set of specific toolbar, brush and masking options.

At the top of the toolbar you will discover the Forward Warp tool, which works in a straightforward capacity, enabling you to push pixels in any direction you wish by dragging them around. In the section beneath this are six other tools with their own individual distortion properties that are useful for various effects.

First, you have the Twirl Clockwise tool. This does exactly as you’d think – it rotates pixels in a clockwise fashion when holding down the mouse button or dragging the mouse. Holding Opt/Alt when doing this will allow you to apply a counterclockwise effect.

The Pucker tool follows, allowing you to direct pixels, inverting them essentially to the centre of the brush area (again, by holding the mouse button). The Bloat tool is vice versa, and both these tools can be used to great effect when distorting figurative imagery in model photography projects, or exaggerating and streamlining features.

The Push Left tool works on two levels: moving pixels left when dragged up and right when dragged down. It also allows you to expand visual values when rotated clockwise.

The Mirror tool copies pixels to the brush area when dragged in a perpendicular direction. Holding Opt/Alt and dragging the mouse will mirror the area in the direction opposite to that of the stroke. The Mirror tool can be utilised to create sophisticated water reflection effects when applying overlapping strokes. The Turbulence tool is equally useful in creating specific visual properties. It functions by smoothly scrambling pixels in an image to create fire, clouds and wave effects in your desired imagery.

Directly beneath the Forward Warp tool is the Reconstruction tool, which can be applied through its own options set. These can be found within the Reconstruction options and the best effects can be easily obtained when using this tool with the Liquify filter’s Mask commands.

Masks can be applied in numerous ways. Specific application is obtained by using the Freeze and Thaw Mask tools. These dictate masked and unmasked image areas respectively when coupled with your Brush Option values. To instantly apply a mask to all, select Mask All from the Mask Options.

Finely i-tuned: This iPod-style artwork has benefited from using the Liquify filter

There are eight Reconstruction options and Reconstruction tool modes – including Rigid, Stiff, Smooth, Loose and Revert – and they all apply variant effects with fundamentally similar outcomes. Most dissimilar is Stiff, which functions with weak magnetic properties. This means that when you increase application distance from your frozen areas, the effects lessen. Reconstruction tool modes include Amplitwist, Affine and Displace, which seem most useful for those working on photographic compositions. The Displace option allows you to reconstruct unfrozen areas to match the displacement at the starting point of your reconstruction. Simply put, it allows you to replace all or parts of your image to a different image area by clicking and spiralling out from the starting point in the brushed area.

All the commands mentioned are accessible through a set of hot keys for selecting tools more efficiently, speeding up the application. We’ve listed them for you to remember:

W – Forward Warp tool
R – Reconstruct tool
C – Twirl Clockwise tool
S – Pucker tool
B – Bloat tool
O – Push Left tool
M – Mirror tool
T – Turbulence tool
F – Freeze Mask tool
D – Thaw Mask tool

Just for fun: When used appropriately, the Liquify filter can provide creative hours of fun, as well as superior application in order to create stunning effects