How would you curve a straight item

[livincolor]

OK, strange request, but I have something straight like an asparagus and I need to make it into a U shape or just a curves shape, does anyone know how to do that in PhotoshopCS?

Thx

[Starling]

There is a filter in Photoshop CS. It is kinda hidden, but I think it is an early version of the warp tool in CS2. It also has limitations. It will only work on vertically oriented objects, so you will need to make your object warped and then transform it to the orientation you actually want afterward.

Open the object's file. Go to Filter - Distort - Shear. You will see a window with a line. It will allow you to click and drag to make your U shape. You can click and drag more than once both left and right. Be careful doing too much moving because your object will not only make a U or S shape, it will also distort internally.

This may or may not do what you want. I tried it on rick rack and didn't like the result. I'm going to locate some chain. The last time I tried this on chain I did it with Liquify (which is your other option) and didn't like the results.

Let me know what happened when you tried it. I'm also going to try some of the other distort filters to see what happens. I'll report back if any of them give better results.

[Starling]

OK, I tried them all. The Wave filter will make a pretty good rick rack shape from a solid vertical thin rectangle. Mine was plain black. You have to set it to Triangle and play with the sliders to get anything. Since I didn't have a texture on my rectangle I don't know how that would play out.

[livincolor]

Thank so much, thats alot closer than I was before, I like the results of the 1st suggestion best, however, I think I was having trouble using the 2nd one. This is great, I was beginning to think it couldn't be done.

Laurie

[Emma]

try Filter>Liquify also (near the top of the list) and push it around a little. Another one to try is Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates.

Most of these will cause some distortion. Liquify gives a more "organic" or irregular result since you use the brush to do it, but you can stretch out the distorted part to minimize the damage!