Users to have more control of smart fill in CS6

In the latest of the series of "Sneak Peek" videos for Photoshop CS6 (all of which have been done on Macs so far), Adobe Photoshop Senior Product Manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes demonstrates a substantially improved Content-Aware Fill technology that allow users to make easy, loose selections but still pull off substantial changes (such as moving people from one place to another or removing objects like power lines) and better choose how the fill works.

In the video (seen below), Hughes shows off abilities that are already accomplishable but very tricky, but are now made simple with the advanced technology that's been integrated into the Content-Aware fill tool. In the demonstration, he shows the ability to now select from which area the fill should draw from rather than leaving it up to the program's arbitrary choice, which could add artifacts and other unwanted errata.

A second demonstration shows off a much more powerful use of Content-Aware fill: Hughes takes a photo in which a large object that dominates the photo is too far off to one side, makes a loose selection of the object and moves it to the center. Photoshop fills in the space altered by the removal seamlessly. This is later demonstrated again when a person is moved from one part of the photo to another.

Finally, changing the mode of the Content-Aware fill to "extend" allows users to make a rough selection of an item and lengthen it. This can be used to make people taller, to make backgrounds stretch on longer, to add background to help re-center a photo and much more. The video also showcases the new, darker UI (which can be adjusted or reverted as users desire). Content-aware fill made its debut in CS 5 two years ago.

by MacNN Staff