AV News 182 - November 2010
Photoshop CS5 Content Aware Fill
Keith Scott FRPS
Our previous Photoshop article concentrated on Adobe's 20th Birthday
celebrations with their launch of Photoshop CS5 and also it's bigger brother
Photoshop Extended CS5. Several new features were briefly outlined
including 'Content Aware Fill'. This rather interesting feature is somewhat
worthy of an article describing its simple yet effective use, because it can be
a real time saver in everyday photographic editing. According to Adobe's
description; 'Content Aware Fill' is a completely new tool to remove any image
detail or object and fill in the space left behind. This filled space matches
lighting, tone, and noise of surrounding area so it looks as if the removed
content never existed.
At first this may appear to be an unrealistic claim, perhaps with a large
content of marketing and artistic license. However a simple example using an
image of Abbots Grange Cottage in Broadway, taken on a Lumix TZ7
compact camera will serve to illustrate its practical use. At best this simple
photograph can be described as little more than a tourist snapshot full of
inherent problems and typical intrusions characteristic of contemporary
lifestyles. Analyzing the picture reveals at least ten elements that most
photographers would edit using Photoshop tools e.g. Healing Brush, Clone,
and Patch tool.
With a large print
or projected image
such faults would be
quiet obvious, but
because of the small
printed page size
these ten faults are
outlined in red in the
following photograph
to enable their easy
identification. These
faults include the
power cable that
crosses the blue sky
and left side tree,
also a thin phone line
crossing the sky at
the right hand side. There's one large TV aerial and two small aerial parts on
the right side chimney, and a burglar alarm on the dark stone wall of the
cottage. On the road there's part of a central white line and those ever
intrusive and objectionable double yellow lines adjacent to the kerbside. The
two small but unsightly shadows that have been cast by cables stretch across
both pavement and road. Such shadows should also be edited as we cannot
have their shadows present after the cables have been removed.
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