How can you use Photoshop's Content Aware feature?

Question

There are a number of places where PS has a Content Aware option. Knowing how to find and use this feature is critical for photo retouching.

Answer 1

The content aware tools are great for many things, but they can create a blurry or smudged look. Takes away from a realistic retouching.

When doing any retouching, be aware of the qualities of the image that you're retouching. One size does not fit all in choice of tools and settings. If you are retouching leaves, a harder edged brush for image cloning or the content aware brushes is a better choice than a soft one, but while working on a fuzzy image like clouds or smoke, a soft edged brush is required for realistic results.

Don't be afraid to use other tools besides content aware cloning tools to create realistic retouching. Adding the cloning brush and multiple layers to the mix can get some seamless realistic effects.

1. Select and open your image, save it as a new image.
2. Make a duplicate layer to work on, just in case:
3. Open and go to the layers palette
4. Drag your default "background" layer over the icon at the bottom that looks like a page with a plus sign on it, that will duplicate the layer and create the one to work on.
5. Once you do that, you have a backup layer in case you need it.
6. To start cloning parts of the image, select the "rubber stamp" cloning tool. (This tool lets you clone any surrounding part of the image over an existing part of the image with transparency control, brush characteristics, angle, etc. .) This can give you much better realism in many cases than the content aware tool alone.
7. Find the part of the image you want to clone and hold your cursor over it click the option or alt key (depending on your computer)
8. Next move your cursor where you want to recreate that part of the image. Hold down the right button of the mouse or stylus it will clone that area of the image over the area you selected.
9. While you hold down the mouse and brush, you will see the part you clicked on is cloning over the other part of the image. (You can set the size/hardness of the "cloning brush" just like you would the paintbrush tool.)
10. Anytime you wish, you can reset your cloning origin point, as described, using the option or alt key. (You can do this as many times as you like, pulling image sections you need for realism from all over the existing image.)
11. Of course, you can always use the cloning tool, in combination with the content aware retouching tools, to get very realistic retouched images and effects.

Answer 2

Ways that you can let Photoshop's Content-Aware feature help you with image editing/retouching include:

1. If you have a selection, you can use Edit>Fill>Content Aware to replace the selected area with pixels that surround it.
2. If you are using the healing tools, not only is there a Content-Aware Move tool, but the Spot Healing and Patch tools have Content-Aware options.
3. When you are using the Crop tool to increase the size of your canvas, there is a Content-Aware setting which can help fill in the empty spaces for you!
4. The Edit>Content Aware Fill tool can help you (almost magically) fix large areas of an image either automatically, or by letting you pick the sampling area/s.
5. The Edit>Content Aware Scale tool lets you resize/rescale an image to resize/re-proportion it by creating "more" or "less" of the unimportant parts of an image while keeping the important parts unaffected