Content-Aware Crop… Like Magic? Or just Photoshop? The jury is still out.
If you have ever opened the crop tool, you may have noticed the Content-Aware checkbox in the menu bar. It is a pretty incredible feature that automates a lot of stuff I used to do when I cropped my images. For instance, have you ever straightened the horizon in your photo and noticed a lot of your image is being cut off on the sides, but if you expand out the crop you get negative space?
We used to do a lot to fix that negative space in the past. It entailed making a selection with the Magic Wand, Expanding the selection by 3-5 pixels, feathering the selection by 2-3 pixels and then select Content-Aware Fill from the fill dialog. More often than not, we’d have to spend another 3-5 minutes cleaning up the lines with the Clone Stamp Tool. Well, all of those steps are a thing of the past with Content-Aware Crop.
Lightroom and ACR cannot use the Content Aware function and will cut out important information in your image to avoid negative space.
You may want to take a look at this tutorial and keep a note lying around because it can be beneficial. Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom are not as smart as Photoshop when it comes to cropping and will, in turn, cut off that critical negative space that could be used to enhance the composition.
In today’s tutorial, I have the perfect candidate for this feature. I have a horizon that is WAY off due to composing the scene in camera rather quickly while the waves were approaching me. If I tried to fix the horizon in ACR, I lost a killer composition because it cut off the top of the trees and grounded the eye of the viewer. However, when I brought it into Photoshop and checked the content aware crop button, it made a WORLD of difference.
If you like this tutorial, check out the entire 90-minute course on cropping!
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
Wow. I can’t count the number of photographs I have passed on because of this very problem – tilted horizon. What a great tutorial.
You are telling me! I just so happened to catch this one before I hit delete 🙂
Ahh, Blake! This is a fabulous tool! Thanks for sharing how to best use it. I wish I had known about content aware crop before I started a massive photo-journal project a couple of years ago, as I am alignment challenged as well, haha. But, I still have 10 photos to edit for the project. I am happy to have this new tool in my repertoire and can’t wait to use it!
Alignment challenged, haha, I used to have an action (I crap you not) that would auto rotate my canvas 2 degrees to the right. I am that messed up, and the image always slopes left like this one.
Thank you for sharing, this is great info and thank you also for making the explanation easy to understand and follow!
No problem, I am just glad I could help, even in some small way.
Wonderful tutorial! Thanks alot.
It is always my pleasure! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Great tutorial. I’ve used content aware but never in conjunction with cropping. In fact, I never even noticed “content aware” sitting next to the “destroy pixels” option. (Seems I am needing new glasses for Christmas.) Love your videos!
Haha! Destroy pixels, I love it 🙂
Hi Blake loved this tutorial this is often a problem I have you have saved me lots of work thankyou. Keep them coming please.
Awesome! Thanks Blake!!
I shoot full frame all the time and there are times the copping is too tight and the horizon is a bit off. Correcting the horizon would crop into the image. But now using Content-Aware you have solved my problem!
You must be a genius. Muchas gracias
Emiliano
Just one more option to use thanks to you!
Great job coming up with another gem.
As usual, another learning experience. Thanks Blake….William
That is way cool Blake, can’t tell you how many times I could have used this in the past. Thank you!!
Another useful tutorial added to my collection. Thanks. Fellow students please note however that if you can’t get Content Aware to work within the Crop tool, make sure that “Use Classic Mode” is unchecked, (found inside Additional Crop Options).