How To Resize an Image WITHOUT Stretching it in Photoshop Using Content Aware Scale

Learn how to stretch an image in photoshop without the subject being distorted. Use content aware scale to extend an image in photoshop. The photoshop content aware scale tool is easy to use. Whether you are stretching for a Facebook Cover or Instagram post content aware scale makes it easy to stretch an image in photoshop.

Hello, everybody, my name is Charles. Have you ever wanted to stretch an image to give it more space, but your subject got stretched too? In this video, I’m gonna show you how to take care of that with the Content-Aware Scale tool in Photoshop. So Content-Aware Scale resizes an image without changing important visual content, such as people, buildings, animals, and so forth.

Make A Facebook Banner With Content Aware Scale

So here we have this example here, this beautiful landscape. It’s in Utah. And let’s say we want to make a Facebook banner out of this. Well, if you want to preserve specific areas when scaling an image, Content-Aware Scale let’s you use an alpha channel to protect content during resizing. So I’m going to make a copy of this background layer, and I want to make a Facebook banner, so I’m gonna come up here to my Crop tool. I have a preset for Facebook banner here. So I want to make this a little bit bigger because the top of that rock is getting cut off, so I’m going to bring up my handle right there, and I want to make this a little bit bigger out here, too. And I’m gonna click the check mark to commit those changes. Make this is a little bit bigger. And just to double check here, I’ll go up to Image, Image Size, and this is 820 by 315. So that’s about the size of a Facebook banner. First I’ll scale it just without doing anything else. So if I come up here to Edit, Content-Aware Scale, and I just pull this, one thing you see is that rock is kind of changing its width, and we don’t want that. When we scale it, we want that area to be intact. Everything else can stretch and whatever Photoshop has to do, but not that rock. So I’m gonna cancel that, and in order to protect that area, I’m going to select the Lasso tool and I’m just going to draw a rough selection around it, and then I’m going to come up here to Select, Save Selection, and I’m gonna call this Rock. Notice that the Save Selection dialog box, the operation here says New Channel, so this is gonna create a new channel. I prefer to create the new channel this way. You could also come in here to Channels and you’ll see that the Rock channel is saved right there, so I could have come in here and made a selection, come in here and come down here to Save Selection as Channel, but I prefer to do that in the Save Selection dialog box. So now I’ve made my selection around the area that I do not want to basically move, and I saved that selection. Now I’m gonna de-select, Control or Command + D and come up here to Image, Content-Aware Scale, And now I’m gonna come up here to where it says Protect and select Rock, that’s my selection I saved, and I’m going to move my handles, and now you can see that the rock is not getting stretched. Everything behind it and on this side will get stretched, everything in between. And then I’ll come up here to click the checkmark to commit the transform. So, in general, Content Aware Scale works best with photos that contain large areas of low image detail, like blue skies, open fields, calm waters, and so on. So this photo is a great example of how well Content Aware Scale would work when you don’t have a lot of image detail. Now it’s not to say that you can’t use Content Aware Scale with a more complex image. You can, but you have a lot more work to do, and that’s gonna require more use of other tools in Photoshop. Hey, if you’re getting value out of this so far, hit that like button.

Stretch An Image With Content Aware Scale

So here we have another example, but this time we have a little bit more detail down on either side of this building here. There’s more trees, there’s more detail in the fence here, more bushes back here. Let’s see how we can stretch this out. So right away, I’m going to duplicate the background layer. And in this image, I’m gonna give it a little bit more room on either side, so I’m gonna stretch it that way. So I’m gonna get my Crop tool, and we’re gonna stretch it just a little bit, ’cause we want to, we want to make more space, and commit that. And now we want to protect that building. We don’t want it to stretch. We don’t want the stairs to stretch. So I’m gonna come up here to the Lasso tool and make a rough selection around this, doesn’t have to be perfect, and save it. Come up here to Select and Save Selection, and I’ve saved that selection. I’m gonna de-select and now I want to stretch it. So I’m gonna come here to Edit, Content-Aware Scale, we’re gonna come up here to Protect and select Building. That’s what I saved my selection as. And now I can stretch this out. The trees in this area over here are stretching and stretch the other side, and you see it’s still stretching that one area over there, and I’ll click my checkmark to commit. And now, got more room on both sides, but we have a little bit of distortion over here. So this was not an ideal image to stretch, mainly because of this detail here, but we can fix some of that. So, because I made a copy of the background, I can go to that layer and put a layer mask on it, make sure that layer mask is selected and use my brush too, and paint black in areas that I can bring back, and it kinda straightens out the areas behind there where the fence is crooked, some of the bushes are stretched, and we can be kind of selective except to the point where it was actually stretched. But the majority of this area in here, we were able to bring it back so it looks a lot better.

So now let’s look at this example, here, such a beautiful structure here. I want some extra space because I want to make a print out of it and I want it wider. So again, I’m gonna duplicate this layer, Command or Control + J, and come up here to my Crop tool, C for the Crop tool. And I’m gonna pull out this way, and a little bit more over this way, and I’m gonna commit that crop. And just like before, I want to use the Lasso tool to preserve all this detail. If there were people or vehicles going through this, it would preserve that too, but we’re preserving this detail. And now I’m gonna save this selection. Say Okay. Same as before, it created a new channel, and I’m gonna de-select, come up here to Edit, Content-Aware Scale, and I’m going to come up here to where it says Protect, select the building, and now I’m going to pull on my handles to scale this out. And I have all this extra room now. Click the checkmark to commit. And as you can see, the structure, all the pillars, the rocks, everything is intact. But if I want to take out some of the patterns that are in the trees here, again, I can create a layer mask, make sure that layer mask is selected, hit X to make my color black, that I’m gonna paint with, B for the Brush tool, and I could paint back any areas that I want to change, that I may want it to look different, so I’m just gonna paint this here, make it a little bit more interesting, and so it doesn’t look like it was stretched. If you want to learn more about Photoshop, click on this playlist here. If you haven’t already, subscribe and like this video, and remember it’s never too late to learn.

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