58
W
E LOOKED AT CONTENT-AWARE SCALING ON
the previous pages. Photoshop CS5 introduced a
new take on the issue with Content-Aware Fill, which uses the
information in the photograph to create an automatic patch.
There are two ways of using this new technology: with a
selection, or by painting with a brush. The method you choose
depends on the kind of object you want to remove from the
original photograph. We’ll look at both methods here.
Content-Aware Fill is a curious beast. Sometimes it
performs its job perfectly; sometimes it simply gets it horribly
wrong. It’s certainly worth using for small selections, to remove
imperfections such as telephone wires in the sky or unwanted
objects in a landscape; here, we’ll show how it can be used to
take out major objects from the scene, with a good degree
of success.
1
Start by making a selection around the object you want
to remove – in this case, it’s the stone statue on the left.
It would be possible to remove this by conventional means,
of course, but it would involve a lot of patching and switching
back and forth between the Clone tool and the Healing tool.
The selection doesn’t need to be accurate.
4
The Content-Aware Fill operation contained a few errors:
we can see a row of five boats where there were two,
there’s a break in the diagonal step, the step in the foreground
has a lump in it, and so on. It’s easy enough to fix these
mistakes manually, using the Clone tool and Healing tool, as
I’ve done here. All we’re really doing is tidying up; the Content-
Aware Fill did the bulk of the work for us.
Content-Aware Fill 1
2
Transformation and distortion
SHORTCUTS
MAC WIN BOTH
59
2
Press S B to bring up the Fill dialog. From
the Use pop-up, select Content-Aware as the fill type.
Make sure the Blending Mode is set to Normal, and the
Opacity to 100%, and press OK.
5
We can also use the Healing Brush j to paint areas for
Content-Aware Filling: choose the Content-Aware button
on the Options bar to select this mode. When we now paint
over the diagonal step in the grass with this tool, we initially
see a dark gray, translucent brush stroke.
3
This is the immediate result: the statue has been
completely removed, and the background patched using
textures and objects around it. It’s not perfect, but the initial
hard work has all been done for us: and as an automatic fill,
the results are extraordinary.
6
When we release the mouse button, that brush stroke
is filled with texture intelligently chosen from the
surrounding area. This time, the tool has done its job almost
perfectly, and the step has been removed in a single, simple
and straightforward operation.
HOT TIP
The Content-
Aware Fill system
is good, but not
infallible. Tr y
selecting a large
object in small
chunks that line
up with significant
changes in the
background; or
try modifying the
selection very
slightly – this
can produce
dramatically
different results.
Although
Content-Aware
Fill is powerful,
it’s not always
predictable.
How to Cheat in Photoshop CC
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