Adobe Photoshop CS5 – Game changer
I remember not too long ago, gazing in wonder at what I had just seen. A friend had sent me a link on a graphic design blog to a new feature in Adobe Photoshop CS5 called the ‘Content-aware Fill’, I think I ended up with a bruise on the bottom of my jaw after it hit the floor.
Now, I have been using Adobe Photoshop for many years, and not since I first began learning to use Adobe Photoshop 6 has anything made me just think “This has just changed everything!” but the ‘Content-aware Fill’ is one of these features.
Let me begin to explain it. Adobe has created an algorithm (or witchcraft as affectionately call it) which allows the software to work out what should be in place of an object should it be removed. This completely negates the need to the often clumsy ‘Clone Stamp’ which more often than not ends up leaving nasty smudges all over the place.
In all honesty, the clone stamp has served me well over the years to just remove minor niggles and annoyances from otherwise perfect photographs, little things like a piece of rubbish in the background, an unwanted brand/logo on a t-shirt. But never have I been able to remove an entire road from a picture or a horse being ridden on the beach, without leaving smudgy artefacts on the image. The other downside to using the clone stamp is that is took an age to clone everything out correctly.
Now, this is where it gets interesting as the ‘Content-aware Fill’ can do all of this in a few clicks of a mouse. Let me show you.
Here is a picture of a little country road.
Now this picture is quite nice, apart from the fact that there is a dirty great telephone pole and a gravel track spoiling the scenery.
So, to get rid of them we just draw a rough marquee around the post to start with (using the lasso tool) and then go ‘Edit > Fill (select Use: Content-aware Fill) > Ok’ and the telephone pole magically disappears.
Right. Now we want to remove the dirt track. This would take forever using the clone stamp as there are different shadows and tones to the ground and so much more to think about. Now I do the same. Draw a jagged marquee around the path and then select ‘Edit > Fill (select Use: Content-aware Fill) > Ok’ and the road is filled with luscious grass and shaded to perfection as the image below shows.
All of this done with a couple of click of the mouse, and not only has the image turned out great, but we have saved ourselves a massive amount of time.
Here are a few more examples of the ‘Content-aware Fill’ working its magic, and all done in just a few seconds.
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