Part I

The Straight Reduction;

This first method is probably the most difficult to do right. With a little practice you should have no issues rubbing 20 pounds off the tummy from someone shot someone at this angle. What we’ll actually be doing is playing with light,

Step 1 Selecting & Setting the tools

Notice on the MENU Bar I have already selected the Dodge brush, I’m in the process of selecting the Range that I need to use the tool Shadows and that I have already selected the exposure of 16% and that I still need to change the tool size to something like 40 for this particular job. NOTE: If you will notice the lower right-hand corner of the tool icon itself some of the tools have a little arrow pointing downwards to the right. This is your clue that Mother Adobe has stacked several other functions or other tools beneath the visible icon. CLICK + HOLD on an icon and you can expose the hidden tools. By default the Burn tool was on top so I needed to Click + Hold to select the dodge tool

Step 2 Dodging the shadow

A With my Dodge tool set to the size of about 150 I’ll click once in the center of the darkest shadow area. B. Next I’ll reduce the brush size to about 50 and make two smooth passes from top to bottom. Be careful not to overlap the brush to much. Overlapping creates Hot Spots. C, Finally I will reduce the brush size to about 13 and get in close to her panty line, Before doing so I will reduce the exposure to 10% from its current 16% because I want a little depth in this area. It should appear as those the fabric is creating some shadow area.

Step 3 Cloning Texture

Now we need to add some texture and coloring to the tummy. I have selected a 100px fuzzy brush for my clone tool and set the flow to 26%. To start the process I selected the area I wanted to copy by holding down the [Alt] key and clicking my mouse. The target area is represented by the + and the clone area is the circle area. I move the mouse slowly and smoothly a cross the desired area twice. In effect a 52% clone. I would rather do this process in 2 passes and slightly over lapping my cloned area along the way. This will blend the skin texture smoothly. Had I set the tool set harder at 52% or higher it would have a much courser effect. Whenever you use the clone tool it’s very important to select a target area that will match the Color, Texture and Lighting you wish to achieve when finished. The clone tool, unlike other tools we’re using has the ability to clone between layers. If this image did not have a suitable target area, I could drag another photograph into my layer pallet and make my selection from that. Then return to this layer to apply the clone effect. We just finished our first tummy tuck ;)

Part 2, the Liquid Diet

Weight loss in seconds with Liquify

The Liquify tool is marvelous, It’s quick and easy, not to mention very effective at manipulating photographs in one single process. You can do about anything with it, Tummy Tucks, Fanny Lifts, Boob Jobs, open a Lazy Eye, the possibilities are endless. Liquify is also a resource hog on your system since it works in real time. You had better shut down most of your open programs before attempting to use it on a large image or you’ll soon see the dreaded “Out of Memory” error. Like the old saying “Anything to good to be true” well Liquify has a major downside in that it will smear the pixels. This usually is not very noticeable, but I stopped using it when another photographer told me she downloaded one of my images, blew it up to 500% and could see the pixel smear. If your not worried about people doing this to you, Liquify may just be the way to go.. As with all major processes in Photoshop, I first Dup the original layer and work from the duplicate. If something should go horribly wrong, I have the original to fall back on.

First lets look at the setup and our tools. I’m sure you have noticed the tool pallets are not movable as in Photoshop. They are clustered around the edges of the working window.
From left to right, top to bottom;
The Brushes, the Smear Brush should be selected by default; we’ll skip the other brushes for now and drop down to the little hand. You can use this to move the image around within the working window. This is especially useful when you zoom in close. You can use the scroll bars. Or you can set the percentage size at the bottom, as I do.
On the right top the brush configurations. Other then the actual brush size I usually leave these settings alone. The density is worth noting because you may need to play with density and/or pressure from time to time. The Reconstruct, Restore buttons, are the same as Undo. I always check Show image, you’ll notice in the preceding screen shot the effect of this. By doing so we are able to see the effect of the push with respect to the original image. You should always click Show Backdrops and select Show All Layers, so that you can see how your work affects all layers. Finally in the center you can see the brush outline. Its very important to select the correct size brush to begin with. This is something you will need to play with and get use to. For this Fanny Lift you can see I’m using a 265px brush.

Using the Smear tool takes a little practice and getting use to. You can obtain a softer effect by using the edge of the brush rather then the middle. You can also use the Pressure and Density of the brush to control this.

I hope this helps, enjoy the rest of the weekend! Please feel free to ask questions and comment if you wish. Please stay tuned for Part III coming to GlamModelz.com first!

For this and more tutorials please visit my personal Blog; DaveDavis.me

Ciao
Dave