Liquify effect
The Liquify effect lets you push, pull, rotate, enlarge and shrink areas in a layer. Several Liquify tools distort the brush area when you hold down the mouse button or drag. The distortion is concentrated at the center of the brush area, and the effect intensifies as you hold down the mouse button or repeatedly drag over an area.
You can limit the area of a layer you distort by using Freeze Area Mask. Use the Reconstruction mode to lessen or undo distortions you’ve created.
The Liquify effect can extend beyond the boundaries of the target layer. This extension is useful when the target layer is smaller than the composition.
This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.
Mask properties
- Freeze Area Mask
- Determines the area of the image in which the distortion is affected by mask opacity and feather settings. Areas outside the mask are distorted; areas within the mask are distorted according to Mask Opacity and Mask Feather settings.
- Mask Opacity
- Determines how the area within the mask is affected by the distortion. If Mask Opacity is set to 100%, the area within the mask isn’t affected by the distortion; if it’s set to 50%, the area within the mask is somewhat affected. If you set Mask Opacity to 100%, make sure to feather the mask to prevent jagged edges on the mask.
- Mask Feather
- The width of the feather used to blend pixels between the masked area and the nonmasked area.
Tools
- Warp
- Pushes pixels forward as you drag.
- Turbulence
- Smoothly scrambles pixels. This setting is useful for creating fire, clouds, waves, and similar effects.
- Twirl Clockwise
- Rotates pixels clockwise as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
- Twirl Counterclockwise
- Rotates pixels counterclockwise as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
- Pucker
- Moves pixels toward the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
- Bloat
- Moves pixels away from the center of the brush area as you hold down the mouse button or drag.
- Shift Pixels
- Moves pixels perpendicular to the stroke direction.
- Reflection
- Copies pixels to the brush area.
- Clone
- Copies the distortions from around a source location to the current mouse location. Set the source location by Alt-clicking (Windows) or Option-clicking (Mac OS) the source point.
- Reconstruction
- Reverses distortions or applies them in different ways.
Distort an image with the Liquify effect
- Select the layer, and choose Effect > Distort > Liquify.
- In the Layer panel, create a mask to freeze areas of the image, and then set mask properties.
- In the Effect Controls panel do the following:
-
Choose the mask you created from the Freeze Area Mask pop-up menu.
-
Specify a brush size and brush pressure. A low brush pressure makes changes occur more slowly, so it’s easier to stop them at exactly the right moment.
-
Specify a turbulent jitter to control how tightly the Turbulence tool scrambles pixels.
-
Select View Mesh under the View Options control.
-
Set a distortion mesh offset if desired.
-
Drag the Distortion Percentage slider to specify the amount of distortion.
-
- Use the tools to distort the preview of the image.
- Use the Reconstruction tool to
fully or partially reverse the distortions or to change the image
in new ways.
Comments
Comments are no longer accepted for After Effects CS3. After Effects CS4 is the current version. To discuss After Effects CS3, please use the Adobe forum.