Quick Tip: Remove a Person From a Photo With Photoshop CS5’s Content Aware Feature
Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Estimated Completion Time: 10 Minutes
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
With the launch of the new Adobe Suite of programs comes the long awaited Adobe Photoshop CS5. Packed with new features to speed up your workflow it truly is the most advanced edition of Photoshop to date. One of the new features we will be looking at today is called Content Aware. This feature allows you to quickly fill in a selection with surrounding content making it look like a part of the original image. In this case we will choose to remove a person from a photo, this can be done in less than five minutes. With the additional image enhancements this tutorial will take you less than 10 minutes to complete.
Original Image
Before we begin, download the image that we will be working with. As you can see, there are two individuals in this photo. In today’s tutorial, we will use Photoshop CS5′s Content Aware Feature to remove the man on the left.
Step 1
Using the content aware tool on different images produces different results. An image with a gradient background such as the sky in this image is quite tricky to work with. Open beach.jpg in Photoshop.
Step 2
We are extracting the person on the left from this photo. Using the Pen Tool, (P) Begin by making a path around the subject. The nice thing about using content aware is that you do not have to be exact when making a selection. In fact, do your best not to cut too close to the subject.
Notice in the image below how far I am drawing the path from the subject. Try to keep this distance all the way around. If you go too close, Content Aware will take pixels from the subject. If you cut too far it will take pixels from the woman on the right.
Step 3
Once you complete the path around the subject, turn it into a selection. This can be done by right clicking on the path and selecting Make Selection.
A dialog box will pop-up, make sure the feathering is set to 0px. Leave all other options as they are. Click OK.
Step 4
Now we have an active selection around our subject. In this step we will make the subject disappear from the image using Content Aware Fill. To do this, go to Edit > Fill.
A dialog box will pop-up, make sure the Content Aware option is selected. Blending mode is set to normal and the opacity is at 100%. Hit OK.
You can cancel the selection at any time by making another selection or just clicking anywhere else on the page with any selection tool.
Step 5
In this step we will remove some of the other artifacts in the image using the same process. The content aware tool did miss a spot where the subject’s foot originally was. To do this, draw a rectangle around the area using the rectangle selection tool. And use the content aware fill as we have done in the previous steps.
Now let’s remove the people towards the right of the image. Create a rectangle selection around them and use the steps we just demonstrated to remove them.
Step 6 (Optional)
Using the Crop Tool (C) lets crop the image so that the focus is drawn to the woman jumping. To do this, just crop out an area of the image that you would like to keep. Beware of the shadow that is left behind from the person that we have removed. You can use the Content Aware feature to remove this shadow but I have decided to crop it out altogether.
Click the checkmark at the top to keep this area. Photoshop will discard the content that is outside of your crop area.
Step 7 (Optional)
In this step we will enhance the photo by giving it a more vibrant look. The colors currently appear somewhat dull. There are many ways to accomplish this but we will use Color Curves. To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Curves, (Cmd + M). A dialog box will pop-up and we will select each of the channels, R, G, B and work on them separately. Select the Red channel from the dropdown menu.
We are going to make two points on the graph. One in the bottom of the top right square, and one in the top of the bottom left square.
Once you have made these points, make sure you enter the values for each. For the top right point the Output value is 199, and the input value is 185. For the bottom point the values are 56 and 68, respectively. You can play around with these setting and adjust them to whatever you feel is appropriate. Repeat this for each of the colors, Green and Blue.
Final Image
Your image should now look something like the one seen below. As you can see, we have removed the man on her left with very little effort using Photoshop CS5′s new Content Aware Feature.
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By Martin Sitar
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OMG! This is such a useful feature! :) Can’t wait til i get myself CS5. xD
I want cs5 badly. Ty for the quick tip ;)
Unfortunately not everybody has $1000 lying about in an old sock every time Adobe feels like upgrading …. More CS3 please!
just get the upgrade for a couple hundred man. CS5 is a must have.
thats just incredibleee
How the hell did it fill in the details of the island behind the guy’s foot?!?
I assume it got the information from the other island to the left. Notice how the two have very similar patterns of green/brown on them.
I can’t wait to get my hands on CS5!
awesome information thnx “)
weak tut, if you look closely enough you can see where it was photoshoped on the top picture, and why did we need a tut for this? anybody with CS5 has already played around with this enough that they know how it works, WTF stupid
Yup, that’s a fair assumption to make… ANYBODY WITH CS5 HAS ALREADY DONE THIS… C’mon man, get over yourself. Not everyone is an advanced user like you, your greatness.
@JB: It’s not exactly advanced to find the fill menu…
Excellent information..thanks for share….
CS5 has some nice new features
Amazing..!
If I make a selection it selects everything outside of the man I needed to inverse the selection just to get the guy.
is this just me or did you forgot to mention this point?
Hey, This happened to me before but I don’t remember how I got rid of it, try checking your settings. Inversing the selection is a quick way to get around it but you don’t want to have to do this every time. Maybe try to reset your preferences, or you have not closed the path properly.
Thanks
Ctrl + Shift + I
…his shadow is still there >< Nice post though!
This was the first thing I tried after I installed it. This and puppet warp. Nice!
got cs5 today, can’t tell how much i love it ;) awesome!
Wow! Man I want CS5 so bad! Any contest to win the suite coming up ;)
sorry but this is old for me now i got the cs5 for a month and a half that was the first thing i try u can do it buy press shift and backspace work to and more fast! thx anywas plz make some more creative tuts
Well some of us haven’t… I really enjoy hearing about new features. Keep up the good work!
marclapatate – Couldn’t agree more. Not sure how hitting the content fill button is a tutorial, I was really hoping for an advanced demonstration of something.
Im sorry to hear its too old for you. Its great that you have CS5 but there are a lot of people that don’t have it just yet. Yes, you can use shortcuts to achieve this but the tutorial also introduces you to the interface involved.
cheers,
The feature was showcased multiple times by adobe, some as dated as October of last year. Not to mention this same type of basic look at the tool is EVERYWHERE now that CS5 is released.
If you are not aware of some of the new features I encourage you to look here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CS5ORG
Lots of videos, some even explaining the thought process of the new content fill algorithm.
The bottom line is not that it’s old, it’s that you are not teaching anything. I am simply disappointed since I was expecting something more in depth then what is all over youtube.
That’s cool, but I still see the outline of the dude… and his shadow lol
Apply a Blur Effect to the area, the shadow is of the girl.
I still see the siluete of the dude… bad tut.
Hi, you are correct as with any photo manipulation, the person creating it always knows what was there and sees the flaws, however if you were to only look at the final image you would not notice. Only after, once you see the steps you notice. This is a Basic tutorial to show how the tool works and how it is used. It works on some images and not at all on others, you might find an image where it is flawless and you might find an image where it is absolutely useless.
i can see it to! http://psdtuts.s3.amazonaws.com/0484_Remove_Using_Content_Aware/image019.png
Ok – not a useful tutorial at all really.
Try doing that ‘guy’ removal on a more advanced and busy background, and you will hit trouble. Content Aware Fill works really well on easy backgrounds like this, but put the subject into something more hectic, and its not as easy as made out here.
Yes, its a useful and time saving tool. Just not as useful as was made out here.
Yeah, you are right. I have a laptop and If I just bend it right I can see the outline, but I think some monitor settings can make it visible too.
One might want to use some blur on that, or some soft clone-brushing
hey, you mind sharing your wallpaper lol i really like it
Stalin would be proud!
very amazing. thanks for sharing.
The wallpaper is of Monaco, not sure if i am allowed to post links here.
Awesome…Thanks for sharing
psdtuts, I hope you’re listening, this is not a tutorial. Seriously, this better be the ONLY “content aware” tutorial I see on this site from here on out. Making a selection and hitting a button is not providing value for my subscription to tuts+ in any way, shape, or form.
Also, this is nothing new. GIMP and Photoshop have had plugins that do this for years (GIMP’s is called Resynthesizer) so nobody needs to run out and throw down a grand for CS5 just for this feature.
How the heck did it fill the island itself. What’s the idea , the logic in it . I can’t fill myself an island that I don’t know how can a software can
I simply love this feature, the moment i got my CS5, I’ve been playing around with a bunch of images. It really is an amazing and time reducing feature.
content aware fill can be a very usefull tool but that’s it, a tool, I have used on numerous occasions and more often than not it missed parts or didn’t do a great job. it’s quicker but the job isn’t finished after you used it. It’s basicly an overzised patch. Still useful ofcourse.
what is all the other stuff in CS5? NOT tools? magic?
btw, the tut says this tool “miss a spot” on the foot, but you can clearly see in a earlier pic that the outline is done incorrectly on that spot.
2 words… Cs5 SUcks!
Look guys, they add few features and want 1000$ LOL.
Content aware is a failure big time.
Hey Martin
Good tutorial I don’t have CS5 but still i have learn this trick.
More stuff like this please Please
Thanks
ohhh
very good
Just showcasing the feature really – and adobe have already done enough of that in the videos on their site and youtube.
When doing something like this, it would have been much better if you showcased a lot of the new features in a tutorial with a proper outcome. For instance, you would use the new selection and smart masking tools available to extract an image and merge it seamlessly into another. That feature is an absolute life saver when it comes down to doing hair and other fine details.
Also, as many have pointed out, there is still an outline of the dude – reason being, in my opinion, your selection was too close. You really don’t need to make the selection so close and accurate. I’ve had great results with very loose selections.
The shadow could have been removed with this feature as well if done correctly.
Thanks for showing us all the content aware tool, nice tutorial, I have reservations about how well it copes with a more busy background though. Just a shame how much the extra software updates cost everyone nowadays.
Thanks for this little tut’. CS5 is Amazing. :)
This is great. I just got CS5 and its awesome, some really good features.
good hoax
hmm something is wrong with the shadow under the banch
yeah, they forgot to make the ground flat before they took the picture. that is so very wrong..
Some of you guys are unappreciative…I wasnt aware of this feature so it was a good insight, sorry we all are not as photoshop savvy as some of you guys. If you knew about this already, was it worth making a comment? How about the people with the smart comments put up a tutorial.
We are not unappreciative at all, this is a very very poor tutorial. This kind of tut has been on youtube and various other sites (adobe included) – and its a generic lesson on the tool itself, not a feature which includes the tool to create something unique at the end of it.
As I said previous, try doing this little ‘tut’ on something with a not so neat background as sky and ocean, then you will see how lame and offensive this tut is.
Also, as others have said, this is not the type of tut they want to see being a tut+ paid up member.
This has NOTHING to do with “appreciation” as I pay for the Plus subscription. I am NOT getting my money’s worth when Tuts+ is wasting my time and money putting up “tutorials” that are not tutorials. It’s that simple. They’re running a business here, some of us are paying them money for their services. It seems to me the quality of Plus content has been short lately and I probably won’t renew if they keep wasting time with posts like this one.
Some of you guys are unappreciative…I wasnt aware of this feature so it was a good insight, sorry we all are not as photoshop savvy as some of you guys. If you knew about this already, was it worth making a comment? How about the people with the smart comments put up a tutorial.
Thanks for the tut! Sure it was one of the major features illustrated by Adobe when they announced the new version but it’s very useful to have a step-by-step breakdown of what to do. And this is not always a stand-alone solution to EVERYTHING. It is simply a tool that will speed up certain tasks remarkably. Thanks again! Keep ‘em comin’!
thank u for share :)
Perfect. Quick and efficient way to change a composition.
Thanks for sharing!
good :> but i see it one moon ago :>
:D and i use photoshop CS5 :>
very usefull version :> :X i live it :>
As a half decent programmer I can confidently say this content aware thing is witchcraft.
Thanks a lot for the helpful tutorial.
look at the shadow at the bottom you made a mistake
I did not do ANYTHING with the shadow. You should contact the person who took this stock photo and let them know that they should flatten the ground before taking a picture…. duh.
Thats why you should buy CS5!