How To: Change a Person’s Body (aka The Virtual Boob Job)

Welcome to the long-awaited second part of my series of pointless Photoshop tutorials! This is the part in which I commit horrible acts against the self-esteem of young women everywhere as I instruct you how to digitally alter any person’s appearance.

In reality, this technique is most useful for boring touch-ups - getting rid of “love handles” or “lunch-lady arms”, emphasising muscles or otherwise giving a photo that magazine look.

However, as is my tradition, I’m going to demonstrate this technique using an attractive female celebrity. In an effort to cash in on the Internet’s obsession with boobs, I will be giving the lovely Ms. Jennifer Garner some imaginary breast implants. Please save any comments about my misogyny until the end of class.

Let’s get to it!

Step 1. Prepare your model:

Choose a picture of a person you want to change. Almost any picture will do, but some are going to be easier than others. Try to pick one where the attribute you want to change stands out on it’s own (for example, if a person’s arm is across their chest, it will be difficult to change the chest without effecting the arm, and vice versa).

For this tutorial, I will be using this picture of Jennifer Garner:

Purely for educational purposes, we’re going to increase her bust size.

To prepare the image for editing, you really don’t need to do anything. I, however, like to duplicate the original image onto a new layer so that if anything goes wrong you can easily go back to the original.

Step 2. Liquify!

This is the fun bit! Select the “Liquify” tool (Filter>Liquify…):

Choose a brush size. Your best bet is to just experiment with different brush sizes to find which works best for the alteration you’re doing. I’ve found that if you are making something bigger it works best to have a brush that covers most of the area. This gives a slightly more uniform change.

Step 3. Stretch, Sculpt and Sexify:

Simply click and drag around the areas that you want to make bigger or smaller. I find it’s best to use a series of small changes, rather than trying to stretch the skin too far in one go, which can look obviously stretched.

And that’s it! You’ve just earned your degree in digital plastic surgery.

This is what my final image looked like with a slight breast enlargement:

$Jennifer Garner\'s new boobs$

The change may not be immediately apparent (which is a good thing), but you can definitely see the difference when compared side-by-side:

So there you go. The liquify tool is incredibly useful, and is used on most of the photos in magazines and ads that you see every day.

Now, if you want to berate me for propagating the big-boob/perfect body myth or demeaning women, or if you simply want to express your adoration for the lovely Ms. Garner (pre- or post-manipulation), or if you have anything else to say, please do so in the comments!