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Content-Aware Scale Tool

Lesson 9 from: Cloning, Healing and Removing Distractions in Photoshop

Matt Kloskowski

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Lesson Info

9. Content-Aware Scale Tool

Lesson Info

Content-Aware Scale Tool

show you. I want to finish this up by showing you were gonna remove a distraction. But we're not going to use any of distraction removal tools. And if I leave you with anything, it's how to start thinking about some of the stuff. So let's talk about content aware resize. So here is Ah, here's an example. Imagine if you will imagine that somebody has imagine somebody wants to put like a wide. They have a wide frame or a wide area over their couch or their bed or whatever happens to be. They want to put a wide picture and they look at one year pictures in there like that. That's the picture that we want over our bed. The two doesn't want a hot air balloon over your bed. That's the picture we want. Like right behind her bedpost. Big, wide. We want big wide picture and you got your picture and you're like it doesn't fit. So what do you do? Well, do you go and you size it up and then cut out all the picture that doesn't work, right? I mean, you're just basically changing the aspect ratio yo...

u'd have toe to save a whole different sized image and get it to print on there. So not a great option. Uh, the other option would be going to your free transform and then stretch it and stretch it. And that's not gonna work. So that's where this content aware scale technology comes in. This is another one of those things. You'll never use it maybe one out of every 100 photos that it will actually work on, because there's a lot of little ifs that this requires toe actually work, but that one time it's Asia is worth it. So the idea behind this is become appear to the edit menu. You'll see there's something called content aware scale so we could go into that, and it it opens up the same will bounding box around around the layer what it's going to do without telling it to do anything. It's gonna look for texture and things in the photo that lend itself well to moving where it can repeat a texture. So what would that be in this photo? You a lot of the grass, you know. It's an easy thing to do, so as I start to move this over and the biggest thing that keep an eye on. It's watched the balloon because once the balloon falls apart, we lose. We lose what we want in the photo, right? A little bit. I saw a little nudge there, but I mean, I see a little bit more mawr every time I go lost some up here. But overall, you're getting the idea of its finding the texture, and it's scaling this based on all that, it's pretty cool. So that's neat. And honestly, guys, if I was just going, if I wasn't going as extreme, we're just doing that. Only anybody ever see. But if it ever does get to that point where you're not able to you want to scale this, you can actually help photo shop along by telling it what to protect. So in this case, all you have to do is just make a selection. So I would make a circular selection over the balloon, make a selection, use your space bar key and you can move it around. I could make a circular selection over the balloon, and while I'm at it going to take my lasso tool, I want to add to the selection I don't want. I don't want my as soon as I start the last, so that's going to go away, so I want to add to it. So if you hold down the shift key that puts us into toe admitted for so I just last so along, it's like that. Then, if you watched the if you watch the compositing class, we saved our selection. The way to do it is you go to select save selection. Loon Click. OK, so now that selection saved and Aiken de select. So now when I go back into content war scale, you'll see up at the top here, says Protect. I can choose the selection that I just saved. So now see that remember before was really starting to get material. Now I'm not going to say it's not doing it somewhere else in the photo because it could. It's, you know, it's a give and take process. So when you protect one thing, sometimes you're letting Photoshopped go somewhere else to do the stretching. So I think it's stretched it a little bit over here, but one of those things that it can really save your, but this is a pretty extreme example. I think the more common example is we all know our cameras don't shoot in eight by 10 bass back ratio. Right? But all of our prints are generally, you know, four by by 10. 16 by 20. Call. Our prints are in this eight by 10 aspect ratio. So you get your your wide, bigger photo into that aspect ratio, and you always have to nudge it to one side or the other to give up part of it. So use it Something like this. You know, bring the photo in. I think a more realistic crop would be. You know, we end up, we end up with something like that with a little bit of edge to fill, and you can go in and fill in that edge and not have to crop your photo to fit that eight by 10. So that's a little bit more realistic. I am gonna finish up with one more. So this is Ah, gentleman. One of my classes has names. David. He sent me this photo. He's like, you know, I photographed, photographed. This guy did a head shot, and he's like, I can't I can't get any the the tools toe. Get rid of the thing on his head. You know, always like, what do I dio? So how close this up by saying sometimes the answer is not a distraction removal tool. So I start to think a little bit more creatively about how we can start to remove things. My mind immediately went to the liquefy tool, and I'm going to show you that. But as I was about to do the liquefy tool, I had one last second thought and I did what I'm about to show you now, which I think works better. So I took the lasso tool and I lassoed an area of his hair copy paste. So now it's up on its own layer. And then, uh, and then I go to edit free transform. Do this over free transform. Get that into place, hit, enter a return, and then do two ways. You know if if you don't use layer mask, just got the eraser tool E and erase it away. If you do use lighter masks at a layer mask, take a brush tool, be at 100% preferably and race that away. Now if I were to do this again, I would probably maybe stretch it a little bit, so Oh, uh, woops, but totally. You know, e, I think all of our minds first went to what kind of cloning and healing can we do to remove that? But I think the I mean, I couldn't get it done with the healing Clooney and couldn't get done with any tool. Um, so just it's your removing distractions, but you're doing in and not with a typical tool to do it. And then the other thing is, is the liquefy tool in the press command J to do ah duplicate copy. I'll go to liquefy Liquefy is a really good tool to minimize something. And if you go at it with that, that thought process in mind, um, I'm not gonna be able to get rid of it. The best I can hope for is to minimize something. We just take our very top tool here the forward warp tool, and you just nudge little by little nudge it down. The other thing you can do is cause eventually we're gonna get close to his head. There's a little tool over here called the freeze mask tool so I can paint over here and I can freeze. It's basically freezing this, so no matter what happens, I'll never be able tow smush his head down. But just go over here and just start to pull or push again. You're kind of going at it with the mentality that I know I'm not going to be able to totally make it disappear, but I can. I can take some of it away and honestly, we could probably come pretty close now that it's smaller with some of those tools toe toe work on some of the edges. So again, going out, it was just with the mindset that it's not the typical cloning and healing situation that I think we look at it and first think that it is a quick question from Jennifer, Baker said. Will the warp tool do the same thing as liquefy? Would you use that in this scenario? Uh, there's a There's a war of tool in Photoshopped under edit. There is a perspective you can yeah, you can try. It's I get a little bit better responsiveness from liquefy. But the work tools is good, sometimes for two. A question from Rodal. Who says, Do you enter what size furrow you want by going to image size before going to content aware scale? That was when you were working on the hot air balloon. So the way that I would do if I had to do that project If somebody said, Hey, I want to 16 by 20 of this photo, I would go file new, and I'd create a 16 by 20 image, and then I go paste my other image into it, size it down. So it fits in there and what you're gonna have area on the left and right, And then I would do it. Can you load the clone tool with a fixed texture instead of having it follow along? No. So he's gonna follow that little squares always gonna file along with you. Now they're now they're flying in, but they're starting to get a little bit off topic from the removing of the distractions. Uh, pierce saying would you use the liquefy tool or warp tool in landscapes? Imagine It depends. Yeah, I have, uh, trees. You know, sometimes if I'm shooting a really wide angle and maybe there's a tree that's off somewhere, I'll take the liquefy tool and all kind of nudge it, nudge it off. So it's a little bit straighter. Yeah, awesome. I'll do anything. Whatever works right? All right. Any final tips here for removing distractions? I find words of wisdom. The final words. I mean it. And I think it ended in a good spot, which is sometimes it's not about the tool. It's about your creative process to using and told. I think of restoring old photos. You know, same thing goes so many of these tools work great for restoring old photos. And sometimes it's the little things we do that aren't even related to a tool. Some, and sometimes the easiest, easiest solution to removing a distraction is grabbed the crop tool and crop it out. I see so many picture like somebody sent me this old picture one day, and it had this old thing behind the guy. And it was I think it was their grandfather or great grandfather, and I'm like the people that want this photo restored don't care about the door that's behind him that has a rip over it. Crop it, crop it and take the distraction out when you're done

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Patch Tool Trick

Ratings and Reviews

Norma Rediker
 

I usually don't leave comments but I really enjoyed this class because it focused on the one subject. Learning photoshop can be overwhelming. The way he walked you through the whole process of all the tools and how they can work together to finished the job was very helpful.

Barbora Lobkowicz
 

Great class. Learnt a lot of useful tips and tricks in a short time. Thank you Matt!

Beatriz Stollnitz
 

Great in depth explanation of the different ways to use cloning and stamping in Photoshop to remove unwanted objects in your photos. As usual, Matt explains the topic clearly and at a great pace.

Student Work

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