At the risk of revisiting the Kate Doesn’t Like Photoshop story and the ethics of digital manipulation, assuming you DO want to give somebody a quick 5-10 pound weight loss, there is a method so easy that when you learn it, you’ll wonder why you never figurered it out before. As with any technique, the secret here is to use it in moderation.

There are a number of ways to do what I’m going to tell you about-there’s Liquify that does rather good distortions, you can outline and manipulate the contour or you can do what I do. I use a functionality found in Photoshop going back to version 2.0. It’s so simple, you really will be rather amused.

The dancer above may not look like she needs to shed any pounds, however, it’s an undeniable fact that the “camera adds 10 lbs.”. I believe it has to do with the 2D representation of a 3D object and the perspective effects in camera lenses. In any event, even this tiny waisted dancer could do with a very slight cinch.

The technique starts by making a rather wide oval selection around the area you wish to reduce. The exact size and oval will matter, however, it’s easy to practice and get the hang of very quickly.

After making the selection, you must apply a large radius feather. The exact amount will depend upon the resolution of the image you are working on and the size of the area you wish to adjust. With digital capture sized images (6-16MP) a good starting point is 50 pixels.

This is the part that might surprise you. Normally, trying to run a Photoshop Filter Plug-in on a selection that has a wide-edged feather doesn’t produce particularly useful results. However, there ARE a couple of filters that do, and they have since the beginning of Photoshop. One that is useful for an instant weight loss is the Spherize Filter. But not at a positive number (unless you really want to be mean). You need to use a negative number on the setting and it’s also important not to get carried away. A -10 will produce only a slight un-spherize and result in a reduction that is quite subtle; often so subtle that people looking at photos of themselves won’t even notice. To them they’ll look “normal”. I used a -15 just to be sure you could see the difference.

The image above shows the result of the -15 spherize through a 50 pixel selection. The results are hard to see unless you compare with the image below.

Because the Spherize Filter will work over a graduated selection, such as a large feathered selection, without causing undue distortion, you can squeeze a waist very easily. Note that the biggest effect of the filter will be in the relative center of your feathered selection. Also, this technique needs to be used gently, unless you’re looking for a cartoonish result.

Try it and see what you think. . .it’s one of those simple things that can be done so easily you’ll do it often. You may want to write an action–all you need to do manually is make the initial lasso selection.

This story was posted on Saturday, April 9th, 2005 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this story through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.