Part of Lesson Plan: Content Aware Fill

Activity Overview / Details

The traditional way to remove an object or item from a picture would be with the Clone Stamp Tool, but with the new Content-Aware Fill option in Photoshop CS5, you can make this job a lot easier. As always, you'll first press  Ctrl+J (Win) /  Command+J (Mac) on my keyboard to create a copy of the image so you're not making any changes to the original picture. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS work on a copy of your picture, never the original.

You should have 2 Layers in your Layer Palette.

To use Content-Aware Fill, we first need to draw a selection around the object or area we want to remove or replace. Depending on the size and shape of the object you want removed, there are various Selection Tools we can use. There is the Lasso Tool , which is in the  Tools  panel. For a very detailed and odd shaped object, the Pen Tool is probably your best solution. 

You'll want to stay close to the edges of the object you're selecting for Content-Aware Fill to work best, but there's no need to be surgically precise.

With the selection in place, I'll go up to the  Edit  menu at the top of the screen and choose the  Fill  command. Content-Aware Fill is a new option in the Fill dialog box. We select it by choosing  Content-Aware in the  Contents section at the top.

Photoshop can now examine the contents of the image and try to fill in the selected area with actual image detail, as if the object we're removing never existed! At least, that's the idea of it. It's not an exact science, but I have about 80% great results. The other 20%, I just adjust my selection and try again. Sometimes the Fill is ok and any stray elements can be cleaned up with the standard Healing Brush or the Clone Stamp Tool rather than having to put in a lot more time and effort by doing it all ourselves.

Good luck and have fun experierimenting in Photoshop CS5.

Teacher: You can show this video again to help reinforce what you just taught.