Tutorials

Wrap up distortion quickly using image warp presets in Photoshop CS2

by Steve Caplin

Applying image distortion doesn’t have to be a warped process. Although you can achieve just about any warp imaginable using the Custom Warp handles in Adobe® Photoshop® CS2, there are times when you want to produce a simple distortion that would just be too complex using so many controls.

Sometimes preset warps do the job you want perfectly, as in the example above. Of course, it would have been possible to distort the text using the Spherize filter—but why mess around with interfaces and tiny previews, when the Inflate warp will do it directly on the artwork?

Here we’ll look at all the available preset Warps, to see what each one can do for us.

1. Arc is the first preset warp in the list. It creates a section of a wheel, with a control point at the top center. The maximum warp for this preset is a complete semicircle.

2. Arc Upper, and its counterpart Arc Lower, again use a control point top center. This preset would be good for creating a cylinder whose base was exactly on the horizon.

3. The Arch preset is like Arc Upper but has parallel top and bottom curves. It’s perfect for creating wine label distortions, which can then be tweaked using Custom Warp.

4. Bulge is similar to Arch, except that the top and bottom curves are mirror images rather than parallel. It’s good in small degrees for bottle labels viewed directly from the front.

5. Shell Lower and Shell Upper produce this fisheye perspective distortion. I’ve yet to find a good use for this one in terms of matching needs in the real world.

6. The Flag preset makes a double wave shape: dragging the single handle up and down will change both sides of the wave to a precisely equal degree. It’s good for flags!

7. Similar to Flag is the Wave preset, the difference being that in this case the edges remain undistorted. The single control point is located in the center left square.

8. The Fish preset creates…um…fish shapes. There is no known use for this preset. OK, when turned on its side it makes a reasonable vase. Sort of.

9. Rise is a variation of Flag, with curves that start horizontal rather than dipping downwards. It’s a subtle difference, but a very useful one.

10. Inflate can produce effects similar to the Spherize filter. The difference is that you can see what you’re doing without having to peer into a tiny preview window!

11. The Squeeze preset creates narrow-waisted, bulging distortions. This one works well for adding animation to, say, a newspaper being held by someone behind it.

12. Twist is similar in use to the Twirl filter, but—just like Inflate and Spherize— it’s very much easier to use and to control. This one works well on faces!

13. You’ll often find that the boundaries of both preset and custom warps extend off the edges of your canvas—and this is particularly the case with expanding presets such as Arc. The good news is that you can switch back and forth between Warp and regular Free Transform mode, either by pressing the Warp button on the Options bar or by using a contextual menu. The Advantage here is that the warp and transformation are seen as a single operation, so there’s no loss of image quality as you switch between the two modes.

Tip: Remember that most of these preset distortions can function horizontally as well as vertically—and there’s a button on the toolbar to switch between the modes. So in step 8, for example, the Fish has been rotated to make a vase.