Hi. Welcome back to the
PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com, I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to use the Puppet Warp tool in Photoshop.
In my opinion, the Puppet Warp tool is the most powerful
photo manipulation tool inside of Photoshop.
And in this video, I'm going to show you all the different options and how they work.
That way you can take the Puppet Warp tool into the next level and create much better
photo manipulations.
Why don't we jump right into the tutorial? This is the image that I'm going to work with.
If you want to follow along with me, you can download it from my website.
There's a link to it in the description.
So we have two layers.
We have a background layer and this man layer, he's already masked out.
So we don't have to worry about masking him out and I've already converted him into a
smart object.
You can convert a layer into a smart object by simply right clicking on it and selecting
convert to smart object.
And what I'm going to do is go into edit, Puppet Warp.
And this is going to apply a mesh over my layer, you can see that there.
And the first thing that you want to do is create pins over your layer by simply clicking
over the mesh.
If you're working with a person and your goal is to manipulate their body,
it's a good idea to place the pins over their joints so that they move more natural.
And next I'll create a new pin on his elbow and I'll click and drag this pin.
And you'll see how his body will move as I drag on the pin, and
that's basically how the Puppet Warp tool works.
You can create a pin over your mesh and move it to a different position.
And in this case, it looks like the person is moving.
What I'm going to do now is show you all the different options
and the keyboard shortcuts inside of the Puppet Warp tool
so that you can take full advantage of it.
So let's start with the mode.
By default, the mode is set to normal.
And the mode determines the overall elasticity of the mesh.
If I switch it to distort,
you can see now how the image completely distorts in a much,
much different way.
See that, see how elastic that looks?
I don't think this is the best option in this case and rigid,
has a lot less elasticity than the previous two options.
You can see that when I click and drag on the pin.
In this case, I'll set my mode to normal.
It just gives you the best results, when you click and drag on these pins.
Next, we have the density dropdown.
The density determines the spacing of mesh points,
more points increases precision but requires more processing time, and
fewer points gives you less precision with faster processing time.
And let me show you how that looks.
I'll select more points and you'll see that the mesh will now have more points around it.
My computer is fairly powerful, so I will keep the more points option in this case.
I'm also going to submit to the layer so that we can see the next option, expansion.
Notice how this piece, this strap is sticking out of his backpack, and
it is essentially its own mesh.
If I click, I'll create a pin over the mesh and I can click and drag that pin to move
the strap around.
And that may be something that you want or don't want.
And in case you don't want the strap to be its own independent piece on the mesh,
you can expand it to include it within the main mesh.
Now that I've expanded the mesh, when I click and drag on it,
notice that the strap is part of the main mesh and not its own independent piece.
So the expansion will help you expand or contract the mesh so that you can either include or
exclude pieces that are coming out of your layer.
In some cases you want to treat those pieces as part of the overall mesh or as separate pieces.
That all depends on what you're working on and the effect that you're going for,
the option is there for whatever you need.
Since we're not really going to be dealing with the mesh anymore,
I'm just going to click on show mesh so that we don't see the mesh anymore.
Next, let me show you how to delete a pin.
You can click on it to activate it and right click and select delete pin.
I'll zoom out.
Another way of deleting a pin is by selecting it and pressing the backspace key on the keyboard,
that's the delete key on the Mac, or by hovering over a pin and holding the alt key on Windows,
that's the option key on the Mac and clicking.
So those are the three methods that you can use to delete a pin.
I'm going to activate this pin now, and
I'm going to move it.
But notice how the entire body moves.
So sometimes you need to create pins just to lock that area down so that it doesn't
move as much.
In this case, notice how I'm placing the hat behind his head.
And I really don't want that, I want the hat in front of his head.
So, what you can do is select the pin and click on these pin depth icons
to move the pin up in the order stack or move it back on the order stack.
See that? And also notice that we have that stroke.
You're seeing that stroke there because I have my expansion set to 58.
So let me click and drag this back down to zero.
And it might be better if I just simply type in zero on the expansion input box
and notice now how that no longer gives me that stroke.
If you really want to take the Puppet Warp to the next level,
then you really have to understand how the rotate feature works.
So let's talk about that next.
In the options bar under rotate, you'll see a dropdown.
Mine is currently set to auto.
And what auto means is that when you click and drag on a pin,
it will automatically rotate it.
See how I'm clicking and dragging on this pin?
And so that you can better see how this feature works,
I'll zoom out and pin, then I'll click and drag on this pin.
And from the options bar, you'll see that the rotate angle input box is adjusting automatically.
And what you want to do is click on your pin and change it over into fix.
And now when you click and drag, notice how the arm,
look at his arm is not rotating like it was before.
See that? It's just sticking straight up.
So let me go back into the auto and show you the difference.
See that? See how his arm rotates now depending on how we drag the pin?
So you may want that control to be automatic or to be fixed.
If you still like fixed but you would like to rotate the pin,
what you can do is hold alt on Windows option on the Mac and this blue circle overlay appears.
When you drag on it, you'll rotate the pin.
Notice that the rotate input box is adjusting accordingly.
So it's a manual control, as you can see there.
And obviously when you're distorting your image,
you want to make adjustments that are realistic.
For example, if I rotate his leg here, notice how now I have this weird bend,
so we may need to fix it accordingly so that it looks more realistic.
And obviously you're going to need to spend some time adjusting the image so that it looks
realistic.
I'm not going to spend that time in this tutorial, but
just keep in mind there's weird distortions that you get if you're not careful.
What I'll do now is rotate this pin over his leg like so, and
then I can continue adjusting this hand accordingly.
Maybe I can move this one down like so.
I'll click on the check mark to commit the changes.
And since we applied the Puppet Warp to a smart object, this effect is nondestructive.
I can click on the eye icon to see the before and click again to see the after.
If I want to edit the Puppet Warp,
all I need to do is double click on the label to bring the pins back
and I can adjust the pins any way that I want.
If I click on this icon, I'll reset the pins.
So all the pins are gone.
I'm going to press control Z on Windows, command Z on the Mac to undo that.
And I can click on this icon to cancel that transformation and leave what I had before.
I hope that you enjoy this crash course on the Puppet Warp tool.
You can use it for a lot of things.
I used it recently on a tutorial to distort a shadow to make it more realistic.
I'll place that tutorial in the description so you can check it out after this one.
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Thank you so much for watching.
I really appreciate you taking the time to watch.
I'll talk to you again in the next Photoshop tutorial.