Photoshop Tuesday: Content Aware Fill

Photoshop Tuesday: Content Aware Fill

Adobe's Photoshop Content Aware Fill: 

One of the most significant additions to CS 5 is the Content Aware Fill.  I normally select the item using one of many select tools found in the tool bar and use the short cut keys: Shift + F5 or you can find it in the edit: fill tab. This key has many uses.  You can use it to remove unwanted items in the photo that you forgot to remove or exist in the scene, like a stop sign, where you would get into trouble if you tried to remove it before shooting.

Before Content Aware Fill - Removal of unwanted objects

Before Content Aware Fill

Add a little skin enhancement and your logo and vola!

After Content Aware Fill

After Content Aware Fill with Logo

But there's More Uses of Content Aware Fill

But here is another great use of the fantastic tool.

How many times have we had our backs against a wall and could not physically move further back to compose the best shot in the camera?  Or, we simply realized later that we have a great shot but it will not setup well with say a 8"x10" crop. If we only had a larger image we could do what we want.

But here is the trick to making Content Aware fill work for you.

Key Point: Content aware fill always works better if it has some part of the picture to reference.

Masters-Tip:

First make your selection with say the rectangular select tool first.

Second give it part of the image information by expanding your selection.  You do this by going to Select:  Modify: Expand: and having it select an additional 10-15 pixels.  It's that simple

Before Content Aware will with 8x10 Crop and missing information

Now Apply CA Fill with an extended selection to give it some image information

After CA Fill, Skin toning and Logo

As you can clearly see,  you now have a beautiful picture of a lovely young woman.  The open space draws you eyes to the subject.  Just put your logo on the right side and you are finished.  I would do a little bit more but later on that.

That brings up another discussion that I had with a local photographer in Mississauga, Ontario.  He asked if I always cropped in camera so that he didn't have to spend the time post cropping the images.  I responded that it was impossible to crop in camera.  You should shoot a bigger picture and crop later in Photoshop.  You don't know if they want 5x7's, 8x10's or some other size.  The clerk at Vistek store nodded  his agreement with me.

For example, I was listening to a video by Bambi Cantrell.  You may recall that she took that world famous shot of John Kennedy Jr and his wife leaving the small church in Cape Cod (I believe it was).  It was posted in over 5,000 news papers at the time.  Bambi simply stated that she cropped the picture as it deserved out of the camera.  That her customers pay her so well, that she Photoshop's every photograph for the customer.  So I guess if you pay me $10-15K per wedding I too just might Photoshop all of your 2,000-3,000+ photos.

We generally limit our cropping to 5x7's, 8x10 or 24x36 or what ever size the customer wants.  So what do you do if the picture doesn't fit well on a say 8x10 crop? You crop the picture with proper compositional rules and use Content aware fill to fill in the white space and have a look at how the image looks.  You just might be amazed at how well Photoshop can fill in the white space.

I have seen this tool do things that I simply could not do with the clone stamp tool.

That is why I tell my customers to have me print the pictures for them.  We crop it, touch it up and add various enhancements.  That photo to the right just might sit looking at you for the next 40 years.  That is also called value added service.

Hope that you enjoyed this one.  More to come every Photoshop Tuesday.

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