Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended — Picture Soup

By Gary Small a.k.a. Photoshopman

Here’s a quick tip for anyone who ever agonized over taking out power lines from a picture.

While there’s been so much attention paid to the new Content Aware Fill feature in Photoshop CS 5, this new feature came with a lesser known, but no less important companion. Though the Spot Healing Brush is not new to Photoshop, it received one heck of an upgrade when they added the Content Aware capability to it.

It works very much like the Content Aware Fill feature, in that Photoshop does a certain amount of pattern matching and analyzing to fill in the area you want to remove with an appropriate texture. However, this tool is much better suited for more localized refinements, such as, power lines, telephone poles, cracks in a picture (think photo restoration), etc.

It’s quite simple to use. Simply choose the Spot Healing Brush from the toolbox and make sure, in the Options bar, the that Content Aware feature is checked. (It’s a little radio button). Then just make a brush stroke over any area you want to remove. There will be a slight delay while Photoshop does its calculations, but the results are amazing.

picture-soup.com photoshop cs5 illustrating content aware spot healing brush gary small tip

The Spot Healing Brush is selected, and the Content Aware button has been chosen.

picture-soup.com Gary Small example photoshop content aware spot healing brush

Here’s a picture I took of Yankee Stadium. Note the offending power line just above the stadium. Normally not too hard to remove, but the clouds complicate matters. Photograph © Gary Small

picture-soup.com gary small photo illustrating photoshop cs5 content aware spot healing brush

Note the dark line that results from making a brush stroke with the Spot Healing Brush. Depending on the size of the brush stroke and the size and resolution of the image, this may remain for a few to several seconds while Photoshop calculates a pattern to replace the area with. Note: the “Click…Shift-Click” method was used to make a perfectly straight line.

picture-soup.com gary small illustrating photoshop cs5 content aware spot healing brush

Here’s the end result. If you compare the Before to the After, you’ll see the light fixture in the top right was also removed. I used the Content Aware Spot Healing Brush on that too! And for good measure, I also used the Lasso Tool and Content Aware Fill to remove the truck parked in front of the stadium. If you look closely, you’ll see it’s not exactly perfect. However, could you imagine trying to remove that truck using previous versions of Photoshop? How long would it take you? The entire edit, power line, light fixture and truck took less than a minute, start to finish. I’m NOT kidding! This new feature is AMAZING! Photograph © Gary Small.

2 tips to make this work even better:

Tip #1: Although in my retouching, I like to use soft edged brushes almost all the time, I have found that the Content Aware Spot Healing Brush works best when the brush has a hard edge. Without going crazy trying to figure out how to change brush hardness, here’s a keyboard shortcut—hold down the shift key and tap the right square bracket key ] to increase brush hardness. Four taps brings it to a fully hard edged brush. Hold the shift key and tap the left square bracket key [ to decrease brush hardness (or increase softness, depending on how you look at it). Four taps will give you a fully soft-edged brush. Remember, for the best results here, a hard edged brush is best.

Tip #2. Straight lines. Ever wonder how to get a perfectly straight line when painting a brush stroke? You’re gonna love this one. Click the mouse button to put down one dot of a brush stroke at the point where you want to begin painting your line (or if you’re using a tablet, just touch the pen down and pick it right back up again to simply “dot” the starting point. Then place your mouse pointer all the way on the other end of the line you want to paint. While holding the Shift key, click the mouse button (or tap the pen down onto the tablet). What you’ll see is Photoshop will connect the 2 points with a perfectly straight brush stroke. This works with EVERY painting tool in Photoshop’s arsenal…the Paintbrush, Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, and yes, even the Eraser. And you thought those artists just had really steady hands, didn’t you?

Play around with this and have fun!

• Gary Small a.k.a. Photoshopman is a Professional Photographer, Photoshop Guru and master of color management. Check out his work at www.jsmallphoto.com.

For more information about Adobe Photoshop CS5, go to www.adobe.com.

By Photoshopman a.k.a. Gary Small

Hi everyone! Well, I know the buzz is on with the announcement by Adobe of CS 5! As one of the people privileged to work with the beta/pre-release of Photoshop CS 5 Extended, I can tell you it’s an amazing upgrade. There are not only a bunch of new tools and features, but most of the tools and functionality of Photoshop across the board have been greatly improved. It’s like a whole new program!

I was going to write a long article, covering all the new features, but since I know many of you are dying to see what’s new as quickly as possible, I decided to put out a few teasers a little at a time, just to whet your appetites. I’ll try to publish as many as I can as quickly as I can.

So on that note, here is the first installment—what I think is by far the best new feature in Photoshop CS 5: Content Aware Fill.

Content Aware Fill is like the Patch Tool on steroids. I won’t even attempt to explain the technology behind it (because frankly I don’t understand it myself!), but the way it works is incredible. Let’s say you have an object, or even a person, or just about anything (trees, cars, telephone poles, exit signs) that you want to remove from a picture. In the past, it would take hours of Cloning, Healing, and Patching. Along comes Content Aware Fill, and reduces the work to mere seconds.

Here’s a nice outdoor scene with a bride and groom by a bridge. I love the scene and would like to re-use it, or make a background image out of it. But I need to get rid of the bride and groom to do so. All I have to do in Photoshop CS 5 is select the bride and groom (I used the Lasso tool to make a loose selection), then either hit the Delete key (if you’re working on the Background layer), or go to the menu and click Edit>Fill. Then in the dialog box that pops up, click the drop down box and select Content Aware and then click OK. Then watch what happens.

It doesn’t always work perfectly, but in almost all cases, Photoshop analyzes the surrounding area and fills in the selection appropriately, to make it look like the object (or people) selected are replaced with the scenery they were standing in. In the same example, I used Content Aware Fill to fill in the patch of white sky in the upper left corner. It was much faster than cloning the trees or using the patch tool and with better results too!

My next installment will talk about the new “Refine Edge” command, and as a bonus, we’ll see how I combined the two to make a completely new picture in under 30 minutes! Stay tuned!