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faster, but you may also get unpredictable or unusual warp results. There is also a ‘Show Mesh’ option that allows you to show or hide the mesh visibility. The next thing to do is to add some pins to the mesh. These can be applied anywhere, but it is important that you add at least three pins before you start manipulating the layer, since the more pins you add, the more control you'll have over the Puppet Warp editing. The thing to bear in mind here is that as you move a pin, other parts of the layer will move accordingly, and perhaps do so in ways that you hadn't expected. This isn't a bug, this is the Puppet Warp tool intelligently working out how best to distort the layer. As you add more pins to different parts of the layer you will find that you gain more control over the Puppet Warp distortions. The keyboard arrow keys can also be used to nudge the selected pin location, but if you make a mistake with the addition or placement of a pin you can always use the Undo command ( ), or hold down the key to reveal the scissors cursor icon and click on a pin to delete it. Or, you can simply select a pin and hit the key. In order to further tame the Puppet Warp behavior, you can use the Expansion setting to modify the area covered by the mesh, since this can have the effect of dampening down the Puppet Warp responsiveness. This can be considered essential if you want to achieve manageable distortions with the Puppet Warp. The default setting of 2 pixels allows for precise control over the warp distort movements, but this won't help with every image. In the Puppet Warp example that's shown over the next few pages I found it necessary to use a more expanded mesh, since without this the Puppet Warp distortions became rather unwieldy. This was especially noticeable when I tried setting the Expansion setting to 1 pixel or less. If you find that your Puppet Warps feel uncontrolled, then try increasing the Expansion amount.

Figure 9.51 The Puppet Warp tool Options bar.

Multiple objects

If you have multiple objects on a layer, the Puppet Warp mesh is applied to everything on that layer. However, you can apply separate adjustments to each of the layer elements.

Pin rotation

The Rotate menu normally defaults to ‘Auto’. This rotates the mesh automatically around the pins based on the selected mode option. However, when a pin is selected you can hold down the key and hover the cursor over a pin, which reveals the rotation circle that also allows you to set the pin rotation manually (see Figure 9.52). Be careful though, because if you happen to -click a pin, this will delete it. As you rotate a pin, the rotation value shows in the tool Options bar. This extra level of control allows you to twist sections of an image around a (movable) pin point as well as alter the degree of twist between this and the other surrounding pins. In the case of the puppet image over the page it can give you better control over the angle of the strings. See also Figure 9.53, which shows you the pin contextual menu options.

Figure 9.52 If you hold down the key and hover the mouse over an already selected pin, this shows a pin rotation circle that you can adjust to twist the rotation of the selected pin.

Figure 9.53 This shows the pin contextual menu, which offers quick access to a list of useful options associated with modifying the pins added using the Puppet Warp feature ( -click or use a right mouse-click to reveal the contextual menu shown here).

Pin depth

The pin stacking order can be changed by clicking on the buttons in the tool Options bar. Where a Puppet Warp distortion results in elements overlapping each other, you can decide which section should go on top and which should go behind. You can either click on the move up or move down buttons shown in Figure 9.54, or use the key to bring a pin forward and use the key to send a pin backward (or use the pin contextual menu shown in Figure 9.53). Basically, this is a mechanism that allows you to determine whether warped elements should go in front of or behind other elements