Project 23: Facial Distortion

I was quite tempted to use photos of my (soon-to-be-ex) hubby for this one, but I thought that would be a bit nasty of me, hehe. So I've used a self-portrait. I like the idea of making my face look slimmer with the , but I'm not sure about the 'fisheye' effect!

Here's the self-portrait I used:

Here's the 'pinched' version (setting of +9%):

...and the 'spherize' version (also +9%):

The differences are subtle and hard to see unless directly compared with the undistorted photo. I actually prefer the undistorted version out of the three - that's how I'm used to seeing myself, and even though the 'pinch' version takes off a couple of pounds, it doesn't look right. Besides, I need to clone out that double chin if I'm going to truly make myself look slimmer!


I decided to try these methods on a circular object, to see how they affected it. I was also interested in the difference between using 'spherize' with a positive value and 'pinch' with a negative value. I used one of my photos of an African daisy, isolated on black.

Undistorted version:

'Pinched' at +79%:


'Spherised at +79%:

 

For comparison, this version is 'pinched' using a value of -79%:

I thought that perhaps the positive 'spherize' and negative 'pinch' values would give the same result, but in actual fact they are quite different. Using a negative 'pinch' value has produced a more highly distorted image. It would seem, therefore, that using positive values allows a little more control and 'fine-tuning'.