A STARTING POINT:
EDIT>CONTENT-AWARE FILL
In recent versions of Photoshop, Content-Aware has
started using a mode/interface to control how pixels
get replaced. There are two areas that we usually
apply Content-Aware. The legacy approach is to
navigate to Edit>Fill, and in the Contents pull-down
menu, choose Content-Aware. This looks at the whole
image and fills a selection with new pixels based on
what it has scanned from the document.
users assume that it’s a form of pattern engine, but
it’s really not. In the following image, you might think
Content-Aware would do a perfect job because the
content is so simple, but you’ll find out fairly quickly
that it can be challenged with something this simple.
It’s a very basic grid pattern with a red organic
shape placed on top. It’s all flattened on one layer,
just as if it were a photo where you wanted to remove
an element from the shot. The area around the red
pixels is about as basic a pattern as you can have in
pixels: It’s square, black-and-white, and has plenty of
the repeated forms available from which to sample
and make a pattern.But as you can see after selecting the red pixels and
going to Edit>Content-Aware Fill, the auto-result isn’t
generating a geometric pattern to fill in the red pixels.There were some hacks used for years aroundhiding pixels you didn’t want replicated through the
use of layer masks. Ultimately, this led to the more
recent Content-Aware Fill interface which can be found
directly by navigating to Edit>Content-Aware Fill.
CONTENT-AWARE IS NOT A PATTERN ENGINE
Before we dive into the interface, though, let’s cover
some basics of when this feature works best. Many
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