Photoshop Content Aware Fill

Learn about the content-aware fill workspace. Also, check out the photoshop 2020 update for content-aware fill. Removing objects from photos just got easier.

Removing objects from photos just got easier with the content aware fill workspace in photoshop.

Have you ever tried to use content-aware fill workspace and thought, whoa, this is way too much. Well, until yesterday, I did too. In this video, I’m gonna show you how fun and easy it is to use. You can do this. Let’s get started.

So we’re going to work with the content-aware fill workspace. And remember, in Photoshop, there is always the content-aware that was available. First, you have to make a selection, and I’m going to come up here and use the rectangular marquee tool, and make a selection right here. Under edit, there was always something called fill, and you can choose content-aware. That was one way to fill this area in, that was in Photoshop for quite a while.

Using The Content Aware Fill Workspace

Recently, there’s something called content-aware fill workspace. In order to use the content-aware fill workspace, I have to make a selection. I’m going to use the rectangular marquee tool and make a selection around this person right here. Then come up here to edit, content-aware fill. So now, here within the content-aware fill workspace, the document window here on the left displays the default sampling area as an overlay mask over the image. You can use the tools provided in the tool panel up here on the left to modify the sampling area in your initial selection of the fill area.

Up here on the right, on the content-aware fill panel, you can specify sampling options, fill settings, and output settings. So let’s go over some of these settings here. First of all, this green color you see is the sampling area. Over here, on our content-aware fill panel, the color that I’m using is green, and it says indicates sampling area. Now you can switch that, as excluded area, if you want to, you see what happens in image stacks, the excluded area. And, I like to switch to have the sampling area, the actual color that you see there.

So, the sampling brush tool, you can remove some of the sampling areas just by brushing, and you can add a sampling area by clicking alter option and the brush changes to a plus, and you can sample more area if you want. And to edit the selection, you have the lasso tool and the polygonal lasso tool. That was a tongue twister there. So, if I want to add more to the selection, I can modify it, press alter option, and I can remove some of that selection. So, this is modifying the selection, not the sampling area. So, that is with your lasso tool, or polygonal lasso tool. And you have your hand tool, and your zoom tool here.

And back up over here on the right, your sampling area overlay features, you can turn off that sampling area, you can change the opacity of your sampling color, and as I said before, I chose green to indicate the sampling area. So, here is the sampling area options. This is a reset, if you want to reset just the sampling area options.

And I’m gonna reset this so that I can show you as much as possible, but now the auto, like the help says, used content similar to surrounding areas. That’s what it’s using now. That was the default. Rectangular, uses a rectangular region around the fill area. In custom, you have this, is when a pop-out says, use a sampling brush tool to add to the sampling area in order to fill the selected region. So, if I come up here with the sampling brush, I can draw in any custom area that I want. Just like that. I’m just drawing here. Let go, and Photoshop is going to work. The other person that was selected is gone. So, usually auto is the default when you first come in, and you can change into these other sampling area options. Now, there’s something called fill settings. And these are settings that you can basically play with. There’s no set order that you can use them, but, it’s more or less trial and error to see which one works. And sometimes, as you can see, there, this did a pretty good job, but maybe, right there where you see the water in that area right there, where it looks a little different. Maybe one of these settings can help you make that look a little bit closer to perfect.

Color adaptation allows contrast and brightness to adapt, for a better match. This setting is useful for filling content with gradual color or texture changes. So okay, we can see that the water there kinda looks like, color and texture changes. So when you select something, say I’m gonna select, high, and that didn’t work: made it more distorted. Change that to very high: that didn’t work. Put it to default: that probably looks a lot better. Okay, so we’ll leave that there.

And rotation adaptation is just what it sounds like: allows content rotation for a better match. So, we can go through those, cycle through those, see what looks better. And these take a little bit time. Low put a pretty big dent in the water right there. I don’t know if I like that. Let’s try medium. I didn’t like medium, doesn’t look right. Let’s try high. Okay so, let’s try some of these other options. We’ll just leave the rotation at medium. Now scale, that option allows content resizing for a better match. It works well for filling content with repeated patterns. So, let’s try scale. So, scale did pretty good. Let’s see if we can improve with this mirror function over here. This option is used to allow content to be flipped horizontally for a better match. Let’s try mirror. Okay, so scale helped, So, mirror helped and scale helped.

So really, you just need to experiment with those settings, and those settings, at least at my computer were kind of computer-intensive. And then the output settings, you can output to the current layer, a new layer, or a duplicate layer. So, I’m going to output this to a duplicate layer. I’m gonna explain what this apply, and, is down here, with another example. Let’s just say okay here. I’m gonna hit command-D to remove my selection. And so, that’s the first example.

Fill Multiple Portions Of Image With Content Aware Fill

And so, in this next example, I’m gonna apply multiple fill changes. And this is new in the February 2020 release of Photoshop. So, you can fill multiple portions of the image without leaving the content or fill workspace. So, let’s get on with that one. So, in this example, we’re going to fill multiple portions of an image without leaving the content-aware fill space. I’m going to use the lasso tool this time, and circle this ice cream cone. Ice cream looks good, it’s my favorite.

So now, come up here to edit, content-aware fill. So now, it removed ice cream cone, but there’s a little bit of a leaf or something right there. So, if I say alter option, and that changes it, the brush to plus. And so I’m telling Photoshop, select that much, let’s see what happens. Okay, so, it took that out too. So now, without leaving this workspace, and this is a new feature of the latest Photoshop update; if I take my lasso tool, and come in here and select this cone back here. And now, the cone is gone.

Down here, there’s an apply, and it’s committing these changes, so, I can say apply, and I can keep working on this. So, if I want to continue to remove more, if I want to select another cone with my lasso tool, there’s another one gone. So, I can say commit or apply, and that will commit on my changes. And I can output this to a duplicate layer to say okay. And here’s my different layers, here’s the background layer, original background layer. I removed two and said apply, then I removed some more and said apply again. And so know to the question of the day. What do you think of the content-aware fill workspace? Let me know in the comments below.

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