Become a Puppet Master with Photoshop

Open the file called Puppet Warp.psd in your source folder. In order to use the puppet warp feature (not found in PS CS4 or older), your object must be separate from the background. In this case the animal is on its own layer. (HINT: to set up this document I isolated the giraffe with a selection tool. Then pressed CTRL/CMD J to separate it from the background. Then I selected it again and activated the background layer. Press Shift F5 and chose Content Aware Fill to fill in the original space with the tree pattern.)

Select Layer 1. Go to Edit>Puppet Warp. Start at the base of the neck and click to place your starter “pin”. Continue to place pins where you want joints to occur.

You can delete pins by right-clicking on them. You can also right-click and choose bring forward or send backward to make the image overlap in a different order.

Once you place your pins, go back and click on each one and make slight movements to make the animal look downward. Be very cautious not to make moves that are too exaggerated or your will warp your image. Patience is key in this method.

When you are finished making your adjustments, press Enter/Return or click on the checkmark on the options bar. If you do not like the adjustments that you made press the Esc key.

Save your image as a PSD file if you think you might need to adjust the image again. Remember that saving files as JPG files will flatten the layers.