This video has been archived due to being out of date.

How to use Content Aware extend in Adobe Photoshop

This lesson is exclusive to members

Course contents
SECTION: 8
CC Libraries 19:15

Questions

You need to be a member to view comments.

Join today. Cancel any time.

Sign Up

Course info

107 lessons / 16 hours 21 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Course Overview

Hi there, my name is  Dan and I am an Adobe Certified Instructor for Photoshop  - this is the Advanced Photoshop course.

This course is not for people new to Photoshop. This is for people who already know the fundamentals. It is for people who have their own ways of doing things but believe there really is a better, faster way to work. 

We will start by learning the best selection techniques available. I promise, by the end of the first section what took you 30mins to mask will now take you 30 seconds. 

What am I going to get from this course?
  • 13+ Hours of content!
  • 10+ Interactive exercises
  • 68 downloadable resources
  • You'll learn the best selection and masking techniques
  • You'll know how to fix images that look 'hard to fix'
  • You'll master advanced levels and curves tricks, specifically with skin, adjusting and enhancing colors
  • You'll learn how to enlarge images without distortion and what to do when things go wrong
  • You'll know how to convincingly remove all kinds of objects from images
  • My favourite: You'll master the ability to distort, bend and reshape images
  • Lets look at how current trending styles are super easy to duplicate
  • You will become a type nerd. We'll use font pairing in Typekit. We'll also use Photoshop's ability to guess fonts
  • Your Artboards skill will be mastered
  • A master of retouching, you will become!
  • You'll learn to edit videos in Photoshop, who'd have thought?
  • We'll also create awesome cinemagraphs, AKA: Moving pictures!
  • You'll learn to master 3D in Photoshop!
  • You'll learn lots about professional, reusable mockups, techniques and shortcuts!

Here's some of the things we'll be doing in this course:
We will correct 'hard to fix' images and learn what to do with blurry images. We will master Advanced Levels & Curves tricks and will work specifically with skin, adjusting and enhancing colours. 

You will learn how to enlarge images without distorting them and also, what to do when things go wrong. 

We will learn how to convincingly remove all kinds of objects from images. My personal favourite section will show you how to distort, bend & reshape images.

We will look at how current trending visual styles are easily created, duotones, glitches and orange/teal colour grading.

We get 'type nerdy' and use font pairing in Typekit. We will use Photoshop to identify the fonts used in an image and learn how to work with hidden glyphs & ligatures as well as variable & open type fonts.

You will master artboards while you are learning how to make easily updatable multiple sized social media & ad banner graphics. 

There is a big section on advanced retouching techniques, advanced healing, advanced cloning & patching. 

You will learn how to edit videos in Photoshop. We will also animate static images creating parallax videos plus the very cool cinemagraphs sometimes called 'living pictures' - great for social media. 

You will learn to master 3D in photoshop. We will finish off the course with professional, reusable mockup techniques & shortcuts. 

This course has a strong focus on workflow. We use real world, practical projects and show you the professional techniques and shortcuts which will save you hours using Photoshop. Throughout the course I have many class exercises for you to use in order to practice your skills. 

Who am I? 
As well as being an Officially Certified Expert by Adobe, I’m photoshop guru and user with 18 years Photoshop experience. I make tutorial videos directly for Adobe and will again this year be presenting a seminar on  Photoshop at Adobe’s 20 thousand attendee strong Max Conference.  

If you can’t remember the last time you sat down and went through the updates in Photoshop, let this course be your one stop professional development and upgrade path.   

Even if you consider yourself a heavy user, I promise there will be things in here that will blow your Photoshop mind. Sign up now!

Course duration 13 hours 45 mins + your study.



Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

Downloads & Exercise files

Download Exercise Files

Transcript

Hi there, this video is all about Content Aware Extend. It's brilliant for things like this where I just need more grass, but it needs to be kind of random. I don't want to see any repeating patterns, or spend ages kind of Masking, or Clone Tool stamping. This one here, I need more grass. Magic. More grass, the blend is pretty seamless. Removed any kind of repeating patterns. Thank You Photoshop, and thank you, Content Aware Extend. Let's jump in and learn the ins and outs. 


From '05 Cropping and Aligning' folder, open up 'Content Aware Extend 1', '2' and '3'. Let's start with the first one. So Content Aware Extend has two uses. It's hidden under the Spot Healing Brush, grab the 'Content Aware Move Tool'. It's weird, it's kind of tied in with the Move Tool. And at the top here, by default it's set to 'Move'. Let's switch it to 'Extend'. Now to use it like a pro you need to have a layer. Then say this one, 'Sample All Layers', because then it's going to pick them up and put them on their own layer. So let's have 'Transform on Drop' selected as well. 


So the first way of using it is basically just like a Move Tool. Like we saw in the previous video. So we drag it here, we get it to the position we want. We can rotate it around, we can scale it in. The difference is, when I hit 'return', that's the original guy, he just doesn't disappear. So we use it the same way we do use the Move Tool, but in this case we just don't want to delete the birds. We want to leave that guy there but we want another version of him down here. Hit 'return', he stays, this guy stays. 


The other nice thing is that I get to play around with structure and color. Right now, I don't need to now because it's come out nicely. I'll zoom in a little bit even. You can adjust this depending how good or bad-- you can see, I'm moving a little bit there, your selection was. So that's one way of using him, let's look at another way And it really lends itself to this kind of, not repeating pattern, but this really flat perspective, it doesn't have to be. Experiment with it, but where I found it the most useful, is in situations like this. So let's say that I've got a leader board banner ad to make, which is the really long skinny banner ad. And I need this grass to go all the way along. This is where Extend is super useful. 


So what am I going to do? First of all I'm going to extend the background. I'm going to grab the 'Crop Tool', just kind of randomly pick a leader board size. Hit 'Enter'. Now I'm going to make a selection using my Rectangle Marquee Tool. I just tapped 'M' on the keyboard, I'm going to grab it all. Can overlap it, that's fine. So once you've got your selection go to the 'Content Aware Move Tool'. Make sure it's set to 'Extend'. Don't worry about the structure and color at the moment, we can adjust it. What we need to do is make sure there's another layer, remember, we're professionals. 'Sample all Layers' is selected. And we're going to click, hold, and drag at this one. I'm holding 'Shift', it kind of slides perfectly to the right. 


Now what I want to do is, I don't want to kind of just join it up there, I want a bit of an overlap. The more overlap, the better. Just some sort of overlap, when you let go, what I want you to do is-- actually I'm just going to zoom in. So I've got that Transform going. So what I want you to do, before I hit return I want you to watch this side, and this side. The difference between using this and lots of other tools is that it's actually going to reach back to the original, and try and blend it all the way across. So watch some of these tall grass bits change. Hit 'Return', kick back. Watch, watch, watch. Still watching. You see that? I'm going to 'Deselect'. And can you see, it not only did the selection that I had, it actually reached back over here and tried to do some adjustments.

 
Now it wasn't very exciting, so I'm going to go back, do it again. Make sure it overlaps a chunk, hit 'Return'. And I'm going to play around with this, because like the Move Tool, the Extend Tool, we can actually make adjustments. We can say, actually I want to play around with this structure, and watch this side here, watching, watching, it's freaking out a little bit. It's a big enough document. Can you see, it went back to this side, and made a different adjustment. Same with colors, I can go this side, and say, I want it to be higher or lower. You're just trying to find this nice balance. Wait for it, 'Deselect'. There's a little bit of grass, I probably wouldn't even worry about it. Should probably fix that bit of grass up, but it's an amazing way of extending things out, and getting them to blend nicely.


Another pro trick is, if I go undo again, we got the selection, okay? And what I want to do is use 'Content Aware Move', 'Extend'. Everything's the same, except when I drag it across I've got that Transform on Drop. So that check box is still selected. What I can do, instead of just leaving it like this, I can right click and say, actually flip it horizontally, please. So that at least the repetition is not going to be as bad. Hit 'Enter', keep an eye on the join. Keep an eye. Wow, did a big join, and went way back over here and started rejigging it. So structure here, turn it up, watch it do it again. So that's the cool thing about this tool. You can get it, and if it's wrong you can slide these up and down. Playing with both color and structure, they'll give you different results. 'Deselect'. I'm happy with it, it's done a convincing job. 


Last option, let's go to 'Content Aware Extend 3'. We want this to be, we need it to be a portrait. We can flip it over, that will be too easy. I just want more grass up here though. I'm going to grab my 'Crop Tool', which is 'C' on my keyboard. I'm going to make this bigger, hit 'Return'. So in the previous tutorials we used Content Aware Scale, right? So 'Edit', 'Content Aware Scale', and it's going to not work, right? Not particularly believable, but if I make a selection of this, I could use my Rectangle Marquee Tool, or if we hold down the 'Command' key and click on this 'Layer', you see, it put a selection right around it. Let's grab our 'Content Aware Move', make sure it's at set to 'Extend'. Let's be fancy, on its own layer, 'Sample all Layers'. 'Transform on Drop', and I'm going to extend this up. Make sure there's a bit of overlap. 


Again, I'm going to right click it so it's not-- can you see, there's some areas here that are symmetrical. So I'm going to 'Flip Vertical' this time. And it's for horizontal as well-- I could have rotated it. Actually I should rotate it. Here you go, now they're offset, but for me, the darken on that side is not quite working, so I'll show you another trick. But we get there, we zoom in because we want to see the blend happen. I'm not sure why it's so important for me to see the-- you know what it is. Click here, wait, wait, wait for the join. It will reach both sides, that's what freaks me out about Photoshop. Super clever. I'm happy with that, you could adjust the structure and the color. 


What I'm going to do is 'Deselect', and be very happy. Now what I do is I go through and try and find any kind of repeating pattern. See this one here? He repeats, I feel like that's an obvious giveaway. So what tool do I use? Probably just the Patch Tool. Set to 'Source', I'm going to be on the right layer, and I'm going to grab this guy. Drag it over here, and let go. 'Deselect'. You can see, cool, huh? Just work your way around, I feel like that is another problem spot. Very vague selections, 'Deselect'. Thank you, Photoshop. You are super helpful. All right, zoom out. And that is Content Aware Extend. 


Before you rush off though, just so you know, I found it works perfect on these flat plains. This kind of stuff where that side is almost the same as the other side. Same with this one here, that side is almost the same as that side. It's very similar in texture and tone, does a brilliant job. Kind of randomizing things, gives you a bit of control of that randomization. And we can tweak it a little bit using the Patch Tool. 


All right, friends, go forth. Sorry, Content Aware Move, Content Aware Extend is my favorite. Enough of that, let's get on to the next video.

  • Powered by Marvin
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy policy
  • © Bring your Own Laptop Ltd 2024