From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Transform without distorting using Content Aware Scale and Move - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Transform without distorting using Content Aware Scale and Move

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- [Instructor] Photoshop's Content Aware Scale and Content Aware Move Tools can help us scale images without distorting important elements, as well as reposition objects and automatically fill in the areas that were left behind. In the house image, I'm going to change the background into a layer by clicking on the lock icon, and then I'll choose edit and Content Aware Scale. However, as I drag this to scale it, we can see that the constrain proportions are on by default. So I'll undo that and I'll click in between the width and the height to unlock that. Now, as I move the right hand anchor point towards the left, we can see that Photoshop is scaling the image, but it's not distorting the house. Instead, it's trying to scale down the areas that have lower frequencies like the clouds in the background area, and it's leaving areas like the roof and the building alone that have those higher frequencies. If we go to the amount slider, we can see the difference between what would be happening if we were using the free transform to scale, where the house would be completely distorted versus what we're getting now. All right, I'm going to Escape out of there. If there's something in your image that you need to protect, we can save that as a selection and then load it. So I'm going to tap L to get the lasso tool, and I'm just going to draw a loose selection here around the house. Then under the select menu, I'll choose save selection. I'll call this house and then save it to a new channel. Then I'm going to deselect, and this time when I choose edit and Content Aware Scale and I unlink the constrain proportions, as I start scaling this, we'll get the same results as before until I choose protect, and then select the alpha channel that we saved called House. Now we can see that Content Aware Scale is going to do everything it can to not affect the area within that selection. And of course, it's not just horizontal, we can also do this vertically. All right, let's go ahead and just scale that a bit and click the check mark in order to apply it. Next, let's take a look at this image where we can use the Content Aware Move Tool to reposition an object while automatically filling in the area that was left behind. So we've got this nice row of birds. I don't actually want these two birds or this one, so I'm going to select the spot healing. I'll use a bigger brush and then I'll just paint right over those two birds and this one to remove them. But I actually want to move this bird, so I'm going to choose the Content Aware Move Tool, drag a selection around the bird, and then drag to reposition it so that it's in line with the others. Now, by default, Photoshop's going to ask me do I want to enlarge or shrink down the image because I might be moving this in perspective, but for now I'll choose done. And as soon as I click that, we'll notice that this bird actually disappears because Photoshop fills in that area. But let's zoom into 100%. I think we can see that there's a little bit of mismatch in the colors, so I'm going to hide those marching ants using Command + H on Mac or Ctrl + H on Windows, and tell Photoshop to hide the extras on Mac. Then I'm going to use the structure and color options. If I increase the color options, we can see that it does a better job of blending. And if I increase or decrease the structure, sometimes it does a better job at keeping or restricting the distortion of the contents within those marching ants. All right, I'll want to make sure that I remember to use Command + H again in order to show those marching ants and then deselect. And as you can see, Photoshop has several different tools all using the Content Aware technology that can help scale images to fit within different aspect ratios without distorting important areas of the photo, as well as reposition images and automatically fill in the missing areas.

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