Liquify (often searched as “liquefy”) is the Photoshop filter that lets you push, pull, shrink, enlarge and twist pixels as if the image were a soft liquid. You open it with Filter > Liquify, or Shift+Ctrl+X on Windows and Shift+Cmd+X on Mac. Photographers use it for small reshaping jobs: smoothing a clothing bulge, tidying a stray lock of hair, nudging a crooked smile or straightening the outline of a product. Used gently, nobody notices it. Used heavily, it bends backgrounds and makes people look unreal.
What the Liquify Tool Does
Liquify moves pixels rather than changing their color or brightness. Every brush in the Liquify window drags part of the image in some direction, and the surrounding pixels stretch or compress to follow. That makes it different from every other retouching tool in Photoshop: healing and cloning replace pixels, and adjustments change tone, but Liquify changes shape.
Under the surface, Photoshop lays an invisible grid, the mesh, over your image. Each brush stroke bends the mesh, and the image follows it. You can show the mesh while you work to see exactly how much you have distorted an area, and you can save a mesh and apply it again later.
How to Open Liquify the Non-Destructive Way
Liquify can be applied directly to pixels, but it is much safer to apply it as a Smart Filter so you can reopen and change it later.
- Select the layer you want to reshape in the Layers panel.
- Choose Filter > Convert for Smart Filters. The layer becomes a Smart Object, shown by a small icon on its thumbnail.
- Choose Filter > Liquify. The image opens in the Liquify window.
- Make your changes and click OK. Liquify now appears as a Smart Filter under the layer.
- To change the edit later, double-click Liquify under the layer and the window reopens with your previous work intact.
A Smart Filter also comes with its own mask, so you can paint black on it to hide the effect from any area. If you prefer to work on plain pixels, duplicate the layer first with Ctrl+J (Cmd+J on Mac) so the original stays untouched underneath.
New to Smart Objects, layers and masks? Photoshop layers and masks explains how they keep every edit reversible.
The Liquify Tools and What Each One Does
The tools sit in a column on the left of the Liquify window. The letter after each name is its keyboard shortcut inside the window.
- Forward Warp: Shortcut: W. What it does: Pushes pixels in the direction you drag. This is the tool for almost all reshaping.
- Reconstruct: Shortcut: R. What it does: Paints the image back toward its original state, partly or fully.
- Smooth: Shortcut: E. What it does: Evens out lumpy or wavy distortion left by earlier strokes.
- Twirl Clockwise: Shortcut: C. What it does: Rotates pixels clockwise under the brush; hold Alt (Option on Mac) to twirl counterclockwise.
- Pucker: Shortcut: S. What it does: Pulls pixels toward the brush center, shrinking whatever is under it.
- Bloat: Shortcut: B. What it does: Pushes pixels away from the brush center, enlarging whatever is under it.
- Push Left: Shortcut: O. What it does: Moves pixels to the left as you drag up and to the right as you drag down.
- Freeze Mask: Shortcut: F. What it does: Paints a protective mask over areas that must not move.
- Thaw Mask: Shortcut: D. What it does: Erases the freeze mask.
- Face Tool: Shortcut: A. What it does: Shows handles on detected faces so you can drag features directly.
- Hand and Zoom: Shortcut: H and Z. What it does: Move around and zoom in the preview.
Brush settings
- Size sets the brush diameter. The bracket keys, [ and ], make it smaller and larger.
- Density controls how quickly the effect fades toward the brush edge. Lower density gives a softer transition.
- Pressure sets how far pixels move with each stroke. Keep it low, around 10 to 30, for retouching, and build the change up over several strokes.
- Rate sets how fast tools like Twirl, Pucker and Bloat work while you hold the brush still.
- Pin Edges stops the edges of the image from pulling inward and leaving transparent gaps.
- Stylus Pressure lets a pen tablet vary the effect with how hard you press.
How to Use Forward Warp Without It Showing
The single most important rule is to use a brush much larger than the thing you are moving. A small brush pushes a dent into an edge; a large brush moves the whole edge smoothly.
- Zoom in so the area fills the preview.
- Set the brush so it is two to three times wider than the bulge or curve you want to move.
- Set Pressure low and Density around the middle.
- Place the brush center just inside the edge and make short, gentle strokes in the direction you want the edge to go.
- Build the change up in several small strokes rather than one large one.
- Toggle Show Backdrop or use the Preview checkbox to compare before and after.
- If the edge turns wavy, switch to the Smooth tool and brush over it, or use Reconstruct at low pressure to pull it partway back.
Protecting the Background With Freeze Mask
The giveaway of a careless Liquify edit is the background. Push in a waistline next to a door frame and the door frame bends with it. Viewers may not notice the waist, but they notice a curved doorway, tile line or horizon immediately.
Before you warp anything, choose the Freeze Mask tool and paint over every nearby straight line and anything else that must stay put. Frozen areas show as a red overlay and will not move. When you finish, check the edges of the edit at 100 percent for any warped lines you missed. If the subject sits close to complex detail, it can be easier to cut the subject onto its own layer, liquify only that layer, and fill any gap behind it.
Face-Aware Liquify
When Photoshop detects a face, the Properties panel on the right shows Face-Aware Liquify sliders. They adjust features without any brushing:
- Eyes: size, height, width and tilt, for each eye separately or linked, plus the distance between the eyes.
- Nose: height and width.
- Mouth: smile, upper lip, lower lip, width and height.
- Face shape: forehead, chin height, jawline and face width.
If an image contains several people, choose the face from the Select Face menu. You can also pick the Face Tool and drag the handles that appear around each feature. These sliders are useful for small, realistic fixes, such as balancing slightly uneven eyes or softening a lopsided smile caught mid-expression. Pushed far, they change who the person looks like, which is rarely what the subject wants.
What Photographers Use Liquify For
- Clothing. Smoothing a bunched shirt, a collar that sticks out or fabric pulled tight by a pose.
- Hair. Rounding off the outline of a hairstyle, tucking in a clump that breaks the silhouette.
- Expressions. Evening out a smile or lifting a drooping eyelid slightly when the best frame has a small flaw.
- Posing fixes. Reducing a fold of skin created by the way someone is sitting, which is a feature of the pose rather than the person.
- Products. Straightening the sides of a bottle, a box or a garment so the product looks the way it does in person.
- Creative effects. Melting, swirling or exaggerating shapes deliberately for surreal or comic images, where the distortion is the point.
For portraits, Liquify is one tool in a larger photo retouching workflow, usually done after cleanup and before dodging and burning and skin work such as smoothing skin in Photoshop.
Wondering where the line is when reshaping people? Photo retouching ethics covers consent, disclosure and the difference between correcting and transforming.
Common Mistakes
- Using a brush that is too small. It leaves dents and ripples. Go bigger than feels natural.
- Bending the background. Freeze straight lines first and check them afterward.
- Doing it all in one stroke. High pressure in one pass looks smeared. Several soft passes look natural.
- Changing body shape the subject did not ask for. Fix what the pose or clothing caused, and ask before going further.
- Working destructively. Without a Smart Object or a duplicate layer, you cannot go back and dial an edit down later.
- Judging only at a small size. Check the whole image at full screen and the edges at 100 percent; problems hide at thumbnail size.
Try This
Open a portrait or a photo of a person in loose clothing. Convert the layer for Smart Filters, open Liquify and freeze any straight lines near the person. With Forward Warp at a pressure around 20 and a brush twice the width of a bulge in the clothing, smooth that one bulge in five or six gentle strokes. Click OK, then toggle the Smart Filter’s visibility on and off. If you can see the change instantly, reopen Liquify, use Reconstruct to pull it back by half and compare again.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it Liquify or Liquefy in Photoshop?
Photoshop spells the filter Liquify, and it lives under the Filter menu. “Liquefy” is the standard English spelling of the word, which is why many people search for it that way, but both refer to the same tool.
Why is Liquify grayed out?
Check that a visible pixel layer or Smart Object is selected rather than an adjustment layer, a group or a hidden layer. Also check Image > Mode: Liquify works on images of 8 or 16 bits per channel, so convert a 32-bit image first.
How do I liquify without distorting the background?
Paint over the background with the Freeze Mask tool before you warp, especially any straight lines near the subject. For difficult cases, put the subject on its own layer and liquify only that layer.
Can I undo part of a Liquify edit?
Yes. Inside the Liquify window, the Reconstruct tool paints areas back toward the original, and the Restore All button resets everything. If you applied Liquify as a Smart Filter, you can reopen it at any time or paint on the filter mask to hide it from part of the image.
Does Lightroom have a Liquify tool?
No. Lightroom does not include a pixel-pushing tool like Liquify, so reshaping is done in Photoshop. Lightroom vs Photoshop explains which jobs belong in each program.
Want the rest of the toolkit? Photoshop for photographers covers the tools most worth learning for photo editing.