Tutorial / Photoshop: the liquify filter

Portraits and photoshop. A marriage made in heaven if you ask me. In this post we'll introduce you to the liquify filter in Photoshop.

Let's start with this picture: 

After a couple of small adjustments in Lightroom, you end up with this: 

To take the magic one step further, open this image in Photoshop: 

So now you have a wealth of opportunities in Photoshop. For this tutorial I'll make some small adjustments using the liquify filter. 

First I created a new background layter (CTRL J). Mind you, all the editing is done in this layer. With the rectangular marque tool I selected the area I chose to edit.  

A pop-up appears: 

Now you can get started on modifying the chosen area(s). Let's take, for example the eyebrows. 

I used a big-sized brush to move the eyebrows slightly up. Same can be done for the mouth and the nose. As I wanted the end result still to be a picture of a pretty girl and not an alien, I tried to make the alterations subtle ones. When you're done, click on the OK button. By disabling and enabling the layer you can see the effect of your actions. 

So this is what my end result looks like: 

Of course you can use this tool to excess, but I prefer to only make subtle changes to enhance the image. 

Two more before and afters. Can you spot the differences?