How To Use Photoshop’s Liquify Tool To Fix Distorted Photos

Sometimes your photos get pretty distorted at wide angles, but fortunately you can fix them pretty easily with the Liquify tool in Photoshop. First we’ll take a look at an extreme example to demonstrate how the tool works, then apply those same techniques in a more practical and realistic scenario.

Liquify is remarkably easy to use and you’ll get the hang of it very quickly. To get a hands-on demo (in Photoshop CS5), watch the video above. To try it out yourself, here’s what you need to do:

• Get a photo that has some minor distortion and open it up in Photoshop.
• Go to the Filters menu and choose Liquify, or Press Command/Control + Shift + X on Mac/Windows.
• Set your brush to a medium size like 100, which is the default size. You may want to make it bigger or larger depending on your photo, but that’s something you’ll figure out as you go along.
• You’ll see a crosshairs in the middle of the brush. Move that over the edge of the distorted area, click, and drag the distorted area inwards just a little bit. You have to be very gentle (or reduce the brush pressure in the settings on the right) or you’ll overdo it.
• Repeat as necessary until you’ve corrected the distortion you wanted to correct.

This is a technique that you’ll find becomes easier with practice, but it’s also something you can become relatively good at pretty quickly. Just remember, it’s not going to help you fully repair extreme distortions like the first image shown in the video above. It will, however, make small fixes very quick and easy, as you can see with the second picture edited in the video.