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Author Topic: Content Aware Fill  (Read 4402 times)

wolfnowl

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Content Aware Fill
« on: June 20, 2010, 04:59:09 pm »

A couple of good videos with ideas on using Photoshop CS5's Content Aware Fill - what's possible, and what isn't.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-russell-brow...re-fill-part-1/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-russell-brow...re-fill-part-2/

Mike.
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JeffKohn

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2010, 11:33:27 pm »

Good example of why content-aware full is no magic bullet. In his samples, c-a-fill may have been better than you could have done manually with the clone tool, but the results still weren't acceptable for serious work. All of the "finished" results had obvious signs of cloning even at web resolution.
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pfigen

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2010, 12:53:31 am »

Quote from: JeffKohn
Good example of why content-aware full is no magic bullet. In his samples, c-a-fill may have been better than you could have done manually with the clone tool, but the results still weren't acceptable for serious work. All of the "finished" results had obvious signs of cloning even at web resolution.

The few times I've used either CA Fill on 21mp+ images, the results have been pathetic, which is pretty much what I was expecting. It's great to add features that look great on youtube tutorials, but Adobe has to know that sooner or later, and most probably sooner, the charade will be revealed to serious Ps users.
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semillerimages

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2010, 01:22:17 pm »

I too was much less than impressed with content aware fill. I think that in the right hands, it probably would be a tremendous tool, but the way it has been shown on the various videos, it's not the magic bullet that they want to make people believe it is.

*steve
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Ben Rubinstein

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2010, 02:26:14 pm »

It's what the healing tool should have been, no more though from my experience so far.
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leuallen

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2010, 07:10:20 pm »

I think of content aware as if I were a house painter and content aware were a prep tool. Content aware does the dirty work and all I have to do is apply the finish coat. In the example provided there were three places I used content aware. For the lamp shade above the head it took 3 or 4 selections and a touch up using the stamp tool at low opacity in lighten and darken modes. I have retouched this photo before and without content aware it took much longer to achieve a good result. For the picture frame upper right, content aware got it right the first try. The lower left corner did not fare very well with content aware. After a couple of tries I reverted to the stamp tool. The chair arm outline was preserved by doing the retouching on a copy layer above the background layer, applying a mask to the retouch layer, and creating a pen selection of the arm and filling with black to bring back the arm from the background.

I find that it is a wonderful tool. All you have to do is learn to use it. It does not do everything but it makes most corrections much easier.

Larry
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feppe

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #6 on: June 24, 2010, 05:27:47 am »

Quote from: leuallen
I find that it is a wonderful tool. All you have to do is learn to use it. It does not do everything but it makes most corrections much easier.

The problem is that practically every marketing video and astroturfing clip makes it out to be the Second Coming.

ErikKaffehr

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #7 on: June 24, 2010, 09:58:27 am »

Hi,

I used it a couple of times, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When it works, it's most helpful.

Best regards
Erik

Quote from: feppe
The problem is that practically every marketing video and astroturfing clip makes it out to be the Second Coming.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #8 on: June 24, 2010, 11:33:36 am »

I tried CAfill on a couple of recent photos as soon as I got CS5. These are quick and dirty experiments to see what would happen, with no further processing whatever.  

Before and after, removing a house from a landscape:

[attachment=22767:trurobea...g_2140aW.jpg][attachment=22768:trurobea...g_2140xW.
jpg]

And removing some people and two waves from a beach scene:

[attachment=22765:wellflee...g_9047aW.jpg][attachment=22766:wellflee...9047xxxW.
jpg]

If I had wanted to do this with the clone tool, it would have taken a half hour or more each. Using CAfill took about 30 seconds each. With much more care I could have spent another couple of minutes doing a more careful selection before filling.

I will find this a significant time saver in a few situations, but not too often.

-Eric

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walter.sk

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #9 on: June 24, 2010, 11:47:04 am »

Thanks for the links.  Both techniques look really good, compared to old fashioned cloning.  I guess I'll really have to learn the Pen Tool.  Powerlines are really ubiquitous in the landscape north of NYC.
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JeffKohn

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #10 on: June 24, 2010, 09:56:00 pm »

Quote
I find that it is a wonderful tool. All you have to do is learn to use it. It does not do everything but it makes most corrections much easier.
Don't get me wrong, it's an improvement over the old healing brush, and I agree that sometimes using it as a starting point and then doing some additional touch-ups works well. But this feature was massively over-hyped by Adobe (and pretty much everybody else) back in the spring, and IMHO it doesn't deliver the goods, at least not the extent people were initially led to believe.

I've continued to experiment with the CA-fill. One thing I've found is that using a tight selection and the "fill" command seems to work quite a bit better than using the spot-healing brush in CA mode. The spot healing brush still falls down badly when removing elements at the edge of the frame, for instance.

The thing about cloning/healing, is that if there's any sign of it all the image is a failure IMHO. If the result from CA-fill is only "not as bad as the clone tool", that's still not good enough if one cares at all about the quality of their work.  That's why I found the results in the Brown video laughable, the results didn't pass scrutiny in a web video, there's NO WAY they would have been acceptable in print. If I was the photographer credited for the images, I'd be pissed that my work was shown in that light.
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Jeff Kohn
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leuallen

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Content Aware Fill
« Reply #11 on: June 24, 2010, 11:44:50 pm »

Quote from: JeffKohn
... But this feature was massively over-hyped by Adobe (and pretty much everybody else) back in the spring, and IMHO it doesn't deliver the goods, at least not the extent people were initially led to believe.
...
The thing about cloning/healing, is that if there's any sign of it all the image is a failure IMHO. If the result from CA-fill is only "not as bad as the clone tool", that's still not good enough if one cares at all about the quality of their work. ...

Maybe I'm much older than you, but I did not believe the hype in the first place. Seen  too much of that to believe anymore.

When I'm done cloning there is very little evidence that it has been done and that is visible only at high mag and you know what to look for. There are lots of little tricks, time consuming, that must be used to get a realistic final result. I agree with you, if you notice it, it is a failure. I tend to use the stamp tool in lighten and darken modes for final clean up. If that obliterates the grain structure, I create a grain layer that matches the image grain and paint/blend it in from a mask. I did this on my example above.

The refine mask function is another that was over hyped. But still it is useful and a godsend because I use lots of masks.

Larry
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