Abstract: A method of doing meaningful modifications on an image is presented. These modifications can then be used in variety of applications related to image shape manipulation and similar shape retrieval. The method extracts macrofeatures and microfeature from a given shape. Deformations are done on the macrofeatures only. These deformations are either predefined, or are taken from a deformation library, or are calculated from the shape itself, The microfeatures are then added to the deformed macrofeatures to get a deformed shape. The shape deformations then allow user's perception of shape similarity to be learned, which is reflected in the values of parameters in a parameterized shape similarity metric. The user can use one of the deformed shapes as the initial query point, instead of the shape he or she started with.