Drag the background layer to the new layer icon to duplicate the layer so you have some pixels that you can ‘work on’ safely.

Now go to Filter: Liquify.

Use the zoom tool if necessary to zoom in to the area that you are going to work on.

Now grab the Freeze Mask tool and go ahead and paint to freeze the areas that are around the area that you are going to work on. Freezing anything (in red) will not allow those pixels to be liquefied. This is a great tool so you can get more accurate and precision weight-loss areas.

Here I’m not focusing on this neck first but rather covering up and freezing the entire areas surrounding the small edge of each face/chinside as shown. This will allow me to only work on these specific areas.

Now grab the Shift Pixels tool. Use the bracket keys to get just the right brush size, making sure it’s not bigger than the area that you have already freezemasked.

Remember that you can use the Unfreeze (thaw) Mask tool to wipe away the frozen areas when you are temporarily done or if you need to fix the frozen area (Dr. Strangelove).

Now with your Shift Pixels tool you’re going to carefully nudge/nip the edge of the face in. This is digital surgery at it’s fastest.

Now repeat the same process for the other side, carefully clicking and dragging it slightly in.

Remember that you can use your history shortcuts (Ctrl Z or Ctrl Alt ZZZZ) to go back in history. This is often more effective here than using revert because it will piece things back together the way it wants to. Use and remember the history shortcuts immediately b/c it will save you lots of time.

Now that you have nipped off some excess ‘age’ get the Thaw tool and erase away your freeze mask.

You can use this same method to continue to carefully do your digital surgery on different parts that need work.

Be careful when liquifying b/c it is changing and moving pixels and will often blur them so try and always work on a small area one at a time to be ‘cleaner’ for the healing/post surgery time.

Here I’m just nudging this area in a little to in order to line up with the new chin line.

 Now you can try working on another area such as unflattering double or triple chins, goiters, or the extra weight that a photo puts on..once again using the freeze mask to retain the other areas that you want to remain unaffected.

The purpose of doing all of this is obvious...we’re retouching images here and you want to help someone look their best and like they’ve been shot on one of their good days in the best light. There’s nothing wrong with this because hey, even Britney Spears has a bit of a double chin on the ‘regular’ paparazzi photographs ..so if retouching is good enough for her it’s good enough for you and your Photoshop work on family members, clients and frients.

To help someone look ‘fitter’ (Cousin Eddie) you can also use the Pucker tool

with a medium to larger brush setting.

Here I’m working on the isolated left side of the neck carefully using the pucker tool to do some ‘liposuction’ (they should rename it).

When you’re done working on one half (I chose to split it up to get more accuracy)..use your freeze mask tool again to isolate the other area that could use some digital suction. In the Photo Retouching DVD I go through how to get rid of love handles also with this technique.

Carefully, I’m using the pucker tool to make the neck a little thinner, being careful to center it and using it slowly so it looks natural. You must be prepared to use your history shortcuts in order to work more efficiently and correct for example the last pucker that you didn’t like.
 

When you’re done, thaw the area again.

Now I’m isolating just the pseudo-goiter area using the same techniques with the Pucker tool. I am making sure that it looks balanced with the rest of the reduced neck area.

You can view the Grid as shown.
 

This is simply the mathematical/scientific way for Photoshop to remember what you’ve done if you go to Save Mesh. If you do this it will remember your work (based off of the grid while you were having fun) so you can load and apply it on another layer or image.

 

For here I’m not going for super dupe weightloss but to make a nice fine-tuning that is still realistic and actually does look more like the person.

  Now you can go ahead and do some more pixel fixing with the clone stamp tool to even out areas and fix these necklines.

 

When you get a source point be aware of it and place it centered around the area that you want to clone it to. I go through this in detail in the Photo Retouching DVD training.

You can easily get rid of extra neckline wrinkles or creases with the clone tool.

Here I’m carefully cloning part of the chin and chin/neckline to expand it b/c somehow it was missing.

Here is the before and after surgery shots. With the right training and experience in Photoshop you’ll know how to touchup the rest of the neckline and image but the purpose here was to show you how to do some digital nipping to help make a person look more in their best interest to themselves and others.

Here is a zoomed out before and after.  You can see how wonderful these techniques can be for many of your images!

Thanks for joining this tutorial on the Discover Photoshop Network.  You can also browse the Discover Photoshop catalog for Photo Retouching tutorials.