Freezing and thawing areas

You can use tools or alpha channels to freeze areas of the preview image to protect them from further changes, or to thaw the frozen areas.

Certain reconstruction modes change unfrozen areas in relation to the distortions in frozen areas. (See Reconstructing distortions.) You can hide or show the mask for frozen areas, change the mask color, and use a Brush Pressure option to create partial freezes and thaws.

To define which areas can be edited:

Do any of the following in the Liquify dialog box:

• To use the freeze tool to protect an area in the preview image from further editing, select the tool and drag over the area. Shift-click to freeze in a straight line between the current point and the previous point that you clicked or Shift-clicked.

The degree of freezing depends on the current brush pressure. If the frozen areas mask is displayed, the tint of the mask indicates the degree of freezing. If the brush pressure is less than 100%, you can fully freeze an area by dragging more than once. If you use other tools to distort and reconstruct partially frozen areas, the effects are proportionate to the degree of freezing. For example, if you drag the warp tool over an area that is 50% frozen and continue dragging over an unfrozen area, the frozen area shows half the distortion that occurs in the unfrozen area.

• To use an alpha channel to define a frozen area, choose the channel from the Channel menu in the Freeze Area section of the dialog box.
• To thaw a frozen area, making it editable, select the thaw tool , and drag over the area. Shift-click to thaw in a straight line between the current point and the previous point that you clicked or Shift-clicked. Brush pressure has the same effect on the thaw tool as it has on the freeze tool.
• To thaw all frozen areas, click Thaw All in the Freeze Area section of the dialog box.
• To thaw all frozen areas and freeze the remaining areas, click Invert in the Freeze Area section of the dialog box. If you used an alpha channel to define the frozen area, the alpha channel name in the Channel menu changes to Custom.

To show or hide frozen areas:

Select or deselect Frozen Areas in the View Options section of the dialog box.

To change the color of frozen areas:

Choose a color from the Freeze Color pop-up menu in the View Options section of the dialog box.