Adobe Previews Major Update to Content-Aware Fill Tool in Photoshop

Photoshop is an intricate application full of numerous features, and perhaps one of the most powerful of those is Content-Aware fill. Adobe just released a preview of an update to the tool, and it looks like it will make it more powerful and useful for photographers.

Adobe's Content-Aware fill is a highly useful tool that automatically fills in large swaths of an image with convincing replacements. One of the issues with the tool, however, is that it can get confused when there are vastly different image elements closely adjacent to one another. In the new update, however, Adobe is implementing quite the update that should improve the experience: allowing the user to control the sampling area. Users will now be able to use either an auto feature that will intelligently analyze the image using Adobe's Sensei technology to control the sampling area, or they can take full manual control and draw the sampling area in themselves. This will allow users to take advantage of the Content-Aware fill tool even in complicated images where one would only want to draw data from a small portion of the frame. Adobe has not said when it will be out yet, but when it is, it should be a nice tool. Check out the video above to see it in action! 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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5 Comments

I was excited to see new development since I use the tool all the time, but this doesn’t really seem like a new function rather a workflow speed improvement.

Adding more shiny things to distract from things not being fixed or improved. This is why people used to skip BUYING the latest version. Now they are almost laughing at us with things like this cause they know they have our sub money. I want an announcement that they've rebuilt every app from scratch for the 2020s, not that they added more code to an aging set of products.

1. Photoshop chokes when opening liquify, memory hog.
2. Premiere, having to convert video files to 720 to be able to edit without stutter problems is a joke. It's 2019!
3. After Effects, JUST SPEED IT THE HELL UP! Move something, render, change something render, render, render, render.

But keep cranking out more new bloatware that hasn't been tested or developed correctly.

"But keep cranking out more new bloatware that hasn't been tested or developed correctly." Well you keep buying it so why not.

That's not a guarantee anymore with other companies stepping up and they are taking that for granted. Almost looking forward to the day they realize they are screwed.

The more Adobe automates Photoshop, the more you'll find office interns drafted as push-button retouchers...