Benz World Blog » Content Aware Fill

Three Camels

Jason Benz — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 01:23:06 +0000

It has been a couple of years since I posted anything from Jordan so I processed this old shot of three camels in Petra. Jordan is a gold mine for the photographer. It is no wonder films like Lawrence of Arabia, Kingdom of Heaven and Indiana Jones The Last Crusade were shot here. I was only there a week but it produced 20 stock photos at the time and 7 blog posts years later.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Braunston Village

Jason Benz — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 12:44:34 +0000

This is Braunston in Rutland, UK. It is a beautiful old English village. To make it look a little older I removed all the pylons, wires, concrete and tarmac. To add some colour to the sky I used the color range tool to select the bright areas of the sky. This selection was used to create a mask which was applied to a gradient. The Blend mode Multiply was used as this is the most forgiving when it comes to masks of light colours over dark colours. A rough mask set to Multiply will not cover the branches or leave a halo. The worst that can happen is the thinnest branches get a slight hint of blue. Even this could be argued as a natural effect of soft focus so the end result looks natural.

Five Pups

Jason Benz — Sat, 28 May 2011 05:26:37 +0000

These puppies were photographed on a family holiday to Wales in 2010. They are either Border Collie Sheep Dogs or Jack Russell Terriers. If you know please leave a comment. The main task for this image was to manually remove all the dirt. Like juveniles worldwide their ability to attract debris seems to defy the laws of physics. Fortunately Photoshop has a variety of tools for removing dirt. Some of them are legacy tools for people who have grown up on earlier versions of Photoshop. If you have the latest version of Photoshop CS5 you cannot beat the speed and accuracy of the Spot Healing Brush Tool set to Content-Aware. Although it is much improved the auto sampling does sometimes get it wrong. In these situations use the Clone Stamp Tool and define your own sampling area by holding down the alt key.

The full resolution version of this image was accepted at Shutterstock 8hrs after submitting.

Havana Cuba

Jason Benz — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:05:30 +0000

This was taken in Cuba. This building is typical of the design and condition of houses in Havana. I like this shot as despite being taken with an early digital compact camera EX-Z3 it had a natural HDR look about it even before I started work on it. To process this image I started be removing the cables in front of the building with the Spot Healing Brush Tool set to Content-Aware. I then added Vignette, Viberence, Selective Desaturation and the Orton Effect. Then I gently lifted the pastel shades of the buildings using individual channel curves. I tried to submit this image for stock but it was rejected by Shutterstock and Dreamstime for copyright. I guess Art-Deco buildings count as Art.

Wicker Spitfire

Jason Benz — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:35:21 +0000

These aircraft appeared on the A606 in Rutland to commemorate the Battle of Britain. I used the healing brush set to content-aware fill to remove the supporting strut and ground. It did the heavy lifting but left a faint outline. I then used the Clone Stamp Tool set to a soft brush to clean up the outlines. Fortunately clouds are very easy to heal as you don’t have to worry about blurring your shot.

Salt Lake

Jason Benz — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:17:39 +0000

This planet was made from a panorama of a salt lake in the Bahariya Desert in Egypt. I set up the tripod on the shore line which is why the resultant globe is bisected in the way. There was a lot of banding between the 20 images when stitched together. I used Photoshop CS5′s new feature Content Aware Fill to remove the planet so I could smooth the sky to the horizon without contaminating it with blurred planet. This is an easy way to remove banding from sky but it does not work on the sand as you would lose texture. Read this to find out how to make your own planet.

Volcanic Sunset

Jason Benz — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:20:40 +0000

I heard the sunsets would change now we have a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland drifting over us. It was a clear night so without high cloud there was no red in the evening sky. These are the silhouettes of two nesting osprey in Rutland.