P: Pro Retouchers need better Liquify

[Katrin Eismann]

Liquify needs an update to support:
1. Smart Objects
2. Command (control) F for redoes
3. Mesh speed-up

All of these issues are critical for high-emd professional retouchers who work with very (2 Gb plus are common) large layered files. Smart Object support would allow them to return to a move and refine. Command F repeat would allow them to apply the same move to multiple layers as needed, and finally the Save & Load mesh is painfully slow - so slow that many retouchers are forced back to CS4.

Liquify is used a LOT to make the beautiful more perfect - but it needs some attention to bring it up to speed with the power of Puppet Warp.

Thank you!

[Edward Caruso Photography]

the slow mesh saving/loading has been acknowledged - an update is coming. very late but I did hear its coming quite soon.
not sure the need for a command+F for multiple moves - saving and loading a mesh is the same. but i'm all for options as i know people have different workflows.

[J453]

Yup. We hope to have #3 addressed in CS5, soon.

[Katrin Eismann]

Being able to Command F would be very helpful to apply the same Liquify quickly to multiple layers and or layer masks. But even making a quick Action that would respect the settings could work.

[therealCarrieBeene]

All of Katrin's suggestions would be awesome additions to Liquify! Especially Command F (something I've been whining about for years) or at least if we could set up an Action to repeat the liquify on multiple layers. As a retoucher I work with multi-layered files that have a gazillion Adjustment layer masks and if I do a liquify to my image I need to repeat it on any Adjustment layer masks affecting that area and going back into liquify and loading the mesh repeatedly is very time consuming and in CS5, which is crazy slow, it can take forever!

These are GREAT suggestions :)))))))))

[Edward Caruso Photography]

i too have to apply the same mesh to alot of masks - I've been trying to get the scripting people I know to see if they can make a script that could apply the same mesh to all masks but no luck so far. quick apply for last mask would be good then - saving the trip to the liquify window. maybe liquify gets a modal dialogue like color range and refine edge?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Puppet Warp needs to be all redone, because it ́s slow, it ́s too much automatic with less control and on SmaretObjects it ́s doing mistakes when you have puppet warp on it and you are transforming the Smart Object with rotation tool, Scale tool and when you edit the content and go back it sometimes break up the whole image.

[J453]

Good idea.

[PECourtejoie]

Photoshop 12.0.4 addressed the slow mesh save.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Well this request is as old as photoshop CS3 :)

I just wanted to bring it to the new forum.

Smart liquify filter. Really, it will be very useful for retouchers!

[Mahdian]

add "alt + right click + drag" for brush size change in liquify

[peter_w]

I'd love liquify to be integrated into the main interface as a new tool in the toolbar instead of being a huge clunky dialog box.

[therealCarrieBeene]

Well yeah! I guess we'd all like it to have the Liquify tool right there in the tool palette. I think they will get there some day. The only problem with that is if you need to repeat the stroke on all of the masks associated with the pixel edits

[Edward Caruso Photography]

yes this is why i avoid puppet warp. there is no way to save and load meshes. I think the dialogue is the only way to do this.

[therealCarrieBeene]

You can save the puppet warp as an Action to repeat the warp. I haven;t tried that, but Katrin Eismann told me it can be done that way 🙂

[Edward Caruso Photography]

i feel i don't get consistently great results from PW so I'm not excited about starting to record an action before using it each time. but i guess that's a workaround at least.

[therealCarrieBeene]

Yeah, I know what you mean, but at least there is that option. I saw a retoucher warping hair with the PW and thought that could be an interesting technique. You can put lots of pin points to hold the areas you don't want to move and then be pretty precise with the warp. It's certainly something to play with in any case 🙂

[Edward Caruso Photography]

Hmm - hair might be a good use for PW, never tried that. Hair doesn't work well in Liquify for me at least. I wish there was a way to lock the mesh so it doesn't rotate w/o having to place a million points all around. And I'd rather stretch the mesh with Bezier curves than pulling those unresponsive pin points. To me it takes a good pull before they move so it doesn't seem that precise to me.

[Reynolds__Mark_]

Yes Puppet Warp looks like a rushed feature. Large files.. forget it. The problem is, it is displaying a high res image in real time, and allowing distortions within the image window.

[J453]

Check out this sneak of new Liquify features:

[tommythirteen]

it`s still inside an ugly plugin pop-up. it`s fast but still lacks many useable and helpful features found in many other pieces of software which are just as fast. but it`s a step in the right direction 🙂

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Liquify needs a modal state to change out tools, offer other controls, remove tools and controls that don't apply, and commit the final result --- so it might as well be in a plugin.

And you didn't provide any specific or useful information about what it is lacking.

[Edward Caruso Photography]

Yes Liquify is great as it is functionally - speed improvement and other enhancments are welcome but it does not need to leave its modal state. I want to see Puppet Warp in a modal state so it gets proper mesh saving and loading like Liquify. This is one thing that prevents me from spending much time with PW. I'll go into my bezier curves transform idea elsewhere.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Puppet warp uses a pseudo-modal state, similar to text and free transform. Yes, it needs a few more enhancements as well. (and probably deserves it's own topic: hint, hint)

[Edward Caruso Photography]

i think i've made topics about it, I'll have a look. It has alot of potential I just think it is very basic (and constricting in what its good at) as it is now.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It's in a popup window still. This is still pretty terrible... it's faster and has something closer to the Alt/Option+Right-Click and drag resize brush feature (but it's clunky and half-baked), and a way to hide half the options.

Liquify is modal, but it should NOT still be in a plugin window. Know what else is modal? The brand new Blur Gallery (Field+Iris+Tilt-Shift).

There are reasons we are complaining besides it being silly to have a popup window. We can't toggle visibility of other layers while 'Liquifying'. We still can't use Liquify with our Smart Layers. Now that the UI is (potentially) dark, there's yet another drawback to the popup. The list goes on and on, and there would be plenty of benefits for this to be outside of a popup window... and virtually no drawbacks.

There is no excuse for not getting around to this come CS6.5 if it exists or CS7. Please actually listen to the community and not give us a half-baked implementation yet again.

You guys have lots of time to add bloat to the software (video editing), but you still don't put real time into fixing something like this that has been clunky for years.