Adobe Photoshop CS5 One-on-One

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TRAnSfORM AnD DISTORT

mOSt Of the SKIllS we’ve covered in this book have

been about enhancing or refining images—taking them to a final
destination in which they are arguably improved yet still recogniz-
able versions of their original selves. Up until this point, we haven’t
done a great deal of what Photoshop is notorious for, transform-
ing an object into something noticeably different. Oh sure, we’ve
encountered an unrealistically large cartoon germ and the odd di-
nosaur posing as a trusty steed. But even when my compositional
creativity has run amok, for the most part we’ve been working with
objects that have come out of our Photoshop machine in much the
same shape and form as when they went in.

And yet, Photoshop is lauded and cursed for its ability to distort and
mislead. And when people wring their hands over not being able to
trust their own eyes anymore, they are more than likely concerned
with the work of the Photoshop tools we’ll cover in this lesson.

You can see why people would be disturbed. Just look at what a
modern imagination such as my own can do to the work of one of
the masters of the Italian Renaissance. In Figure 8-1, I’ve taken Ra-
phael’s masterpiece, Portrait of Maddalena Doni (top image), and
turned her from a distinguished 16th-century merchant’s wife to a
doe-eyed 21st-century starlet who just landed a choice role in a his-
torical epic about a 16th-century merchant’s wife (bottom image).
Armed with the Liquify tool, I’ve enlarged her eyes, plumped her
lips, toned her shoulders, and given her a nose job. Basically, she’s
gone Hollywood. You can call it my interpretive modernization of
the feminine ideal or a boorish—if not downright offensive—attack
on classic culture, but one thing is certain, with Photoshop’s distor-
tion tools, nothing is sacred.

Whether you want to simply scale or skew an item to make it fit
your composition or completely bend or squish an object in your
image, Photoshop has a small but powerful set of tools to help you. Figure 8-1.

Raphael’s Maddalena

After visit to Dr. Deke, A-List Plastic Surgeon