Photoshop CS5 content aware..

Ricky91t

After waiting patiently for my CS5 trial to download I'm now a bit annoyed I wasted my time... The content aware delete seems to be crap, even removing a poster from a wall which was all one colour and had a lot of wall space to the right, bottom and top of the image and quite a bit to the left it still decided to copy half a door into the deleted area..

I attempt to delete a number plate off a car( WRC subaru FWIW ) and instead of cloning the bumper colour into it's place it instead copy's tiny part of the badge and grill.

I downloaded the 'leaked' white rabbit version and thought for a non-public beta it's quite good, but this is no better and paying at least €150(student pricing) for it seems pointless.. Any other views on it?

charybdis

I haven't used CS5 but it doesn't surprise me that content aware fill doesn't have the desired effect in the scenarios you've described.

I think you probably had unrealistic expectations for what it would do.

Could you post before/after examples of your images?

Thecageyone

I think some people thought it was going to be magic. It does the job, providing you use it properly. It can be fiddly if you use too big a brush size on the content aware heal brush, or if you lasso a selection very close to something else, it can get a little confused.

melekalikimaka

<cancels torrent download>

cheers for the heads up, suspected as much tbh

ianflynn

melekalikimaka wrote: »

<cancels torrent download>

cheers for the heads up, suspected as much tbh

its still worth getting. i have the "white rabbit" version too

Thecageyone

melekalikimaka wrote: »

<cancels torrent download>

cheers for the heads up, suspected as much tbh

But, seriously ... did you think it was going to magically make your images brilliant?

It's smoother than cs4 [going on the portable version] and I like it better overall. Content aware does what they showed in the clips, it will remove thrash from grass, it will remove a lamp post, it does remove tree branches from the sky ... but not always perfectly. There is a little clean up needed at times.

It is just a clever clone tool after all.

melekalikimaka

Thecageyone wrote: »

But, seriously ... did you think it was going to magically make your images brilliant?

no i didn't, i thought it was gonna be over hyped, for the moment, cs5 will probably kill my lappy ram wise, cs4 is grand for now, i use lightroom these days for most my cloning, the content aware if was what it claimed, I was all up for giving it a bash, but by all accounts its a bit of a dud

swingking

thank God someone else has brought this point up.

Content-aware fill is not great at all and I was thinking it was just my system

Thecageyone

You thought it was your system in what way? is it really slow? Or you just think it's crap?

It's a glorified clone tool, thought everyone with a bit of sense knew that before it arrived? I'm glad it isn't amazing, or people would just get lazy and have it pretty much do all the work for them.

Ricky91t

charybdis wrote: »

I haven't used CS5 but it doesn't surprise me that content aware fill doesn't have the desired effect in the scenarios you've described.

I think you probably had unrealistic expectations for what it would do.

Could you post before/after examples of your images?

Well from what I saw the adobe labs doing, I would atleast expect to be able to remove a posted from a wall.

charybdis

Ricky91t wrote: »

Well from what I saw the adobe labs doing, I would atleast expect to be able to remove a posted from a wall.

Post before/after images. It's hard to know if your expectations are reasonable based on the vague description you've given, so instead of decrying the technology on the basis of some loosely described anecdotal experiences you should show us examples of it not working.

Ricky91t

charybdis wrote: »

Post before/after images. It's hard to know if your expectations are reasonable based on the vague description you've given, so instead of decrying the technology on the basis of some loosely described anecdotal experiences you should show us examples of it not working.

I don't think your opinion or anybody elses will help, I saw with my own eyes what it was capable of, Removing a road from a desert etc, And in my opinion It should definitely be able to the small edits I've attempted.

sunny2004

Content aware is amazing, you just need to know when to use it..

charybdis

Ricky91t wrote: »

I don't think your opinion or anybody elses will help, I saw with my own eyes what it was capable of, Removing a road from a desert etc, And in my opinion It should definitely be able to the small edits I've attempted.

What I'm saying is that it's difficult for us to ascertain whether or not the technology is not what was expected or if your expectations were unrealistic. Since you are declaring your opinions in a public forum and asking for input, it is not unreasonable to request that you qualify your assertions by posting example images.

5uspect

Ricky91t wrote: »

I don't think your opinion or anybody elses will help, I saw with my own eyes what it was capable of, Removing a road from a desert etc, And in my opinion It should definitely be able to the small edits I've attempted.

If you look at the desert picture it simply mirrors the bushes beside the road onto the road.

It looks good at filling in gradients smoothly but failed with your poster example.
I suspect it is a marriage between the healing brush, marque tool and the patch tool.

Are there any other options such as in content aware scaling from CS4 (such as the protection settings) that you can enable to give better results?

Ricky91t

charybdis wrote: »

What I'm saying is that it's difficult for us to ascertain whether or not the technology is not what was expected or if your expectations were unrealistic. Since you are declaring your opinions in a public forum and asking for input, it is not unreasonable to request that you qualify your assertions by posting example images.

The only input I was requesting was to see what other people thought of it, I may be using it wrong and badly but if other members also say they have the same experience then I know it can't be great.

Where as If everybody comes on here saying "Oh it's amazing", "Wow it's brilliant" from the few tests I've done I feel it isn't up to my expectations.

Ok here an example, I'm sure you can tell which is which, The selection it's chosen seems very wrong.

Borderfox

Heres a quick and dirty one, 4 shot panoramic with the usual black edges. Selected the blank areas and fill using content aware.

Before


After

5uspect

I haven't had a chance to try it but I would limit what the algorithm has access to.
I would copy a representative selection around the area you want to fill onto a new layer and then apply it.

So in the shot above I would select the dark area around the sign first. Move that section to the new layer and work from there. In the example of the poster copy the wall first excluding busy objects like doors.

swingking

Thecageyone wrote: »

You thought it was your system in what way? is it really slow? Or you just think it's crap?

What I mean is that it takes a long time to work. My computer is not the fastest but it's taking about 2-3 mins for something small to be filled in

GirlOfGlass

I knew content aware looked to good to be true. Still gonna get the trial version to try it though.

alexlyons

I quite like it, worked very well on a shot I had that had a flag in the top right 20% of the image or so, with sky around it. unnoticeable once it was done and that was a pretty large tiff file from aperture. using an imac, maybe that's why it's not crawling along :P

Thecageyone

swingking wrote: »

What I mean is that it takes a long time to work. My computer is not the fastest but it's taking about 2-3 mins for something small to be filled in

That is slow, my pc isn't the fastest but it only takes a few seconds to do a fill. Try a disc clean up and uninstall any unused programs, clear up some space.

Here's a handy simple guide to cleaning up clutter and speeding your rig up:

http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/maintenance/speed.aspx

I'm sure you know all that but people often forget to do disc clean ups etc ... be surprised how many GB you might free up

swingking

Thecageyone wrote: »

That is slow, my pc isn't the fastest but it only takes a few seconds to do a fill. Try a disc clean up and uninstall any unused programs, clear up some space.

Here's a handy simple guide to cleaning up clutter and speeding your rig up:

http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/maintenance/speed.aspx

I'm sure you know all that but people often forget to do disc clean ups etc ... be surprised how many GB you might free up

running on a Mac.

But here's something I've noticed. When I run it in 32 bit mode, content aware fill is much much faster.

stick-dan

Few points to note,

Look at Richard's chosen photo and borderfox's. Two completely different types of photo. I would never have expected for a photo such as richards with such DOF to have been properly utilized by content aware, there just isn't enough definition to that area of the photograph. Borderfox's however there is a lot more detail to work with. How can you adequately clone DOF with content aware. personally i would never seen these types of photos (one with large amount of DOF) benefiting from Content aware. Borderfox's photo has turned out well not the finished article by any means but content aware has done the bulk of the work for him. I think the tool is adequately performing to be honest.

It wasn't made clear the specific type of photo's it would excel when utilized in nor was it specified which ones it wouldn't. Perhaps Richard has found out that answer now?

Thecageyone

swingking wrote: »

running on a Mac.

But here's something I've noticed. When I run it in 32 bit mode, content aware fill is much much faster.

Ah, did you check the obvious? To see if the version you downloaded was the full 64bit? My machine is only 32bit, so that's the version I grabbed and it works pretty smoothly.

sunny2004

If you think content awre is a cure all then you will be sadly disappointed.
But knowing its limitations, and when it works, its brilliant..

charybdis

Ricky91t wrote: »

The only input I was requesting was to see what other people thought of it, I may be using it wrong and badly but if other members also say they have the same experience then I know it can't be great.

Where as If everybody comes on here saying "Oh it's amazing", "Wow it's brilliant" from the few tests I've done I feel it isn't up to my expectations.

Ok here an example, I'm sure you can tell which is which, The selection it's chosen seems very wrong.

As I suspected, this is a situation in which it's unrealistic to expect content aware fill to have the desired effect. There's a big difference between using it to clone a piece of litter out of a field and bizarrely trying to remove a portion of the out-of-focus area of an image. Looking at the untouched image, I'm not even sure what you thought content aware fill might replace your selection with; what did you think it would do?

plasticman3327

As Dan and charybdis have said I don't know what you expected content aware to fill in there, its quite a complex out of focus background.

I just played with the white rabbit version. A quick 15 mins gave the attached . While not perfect I think it was pretty "smart" about its auto fill (nothing other than content aware was used on the image and I was just messing around to test)

Fenster

plasticman3327 wrote: »

As Dan and charybdis have said I don't know what you expected content aware to fill in there, its quite a complex out of focus background.

I just played with the white rabbit version. A quick 15 mins gave the attached . While not perfect I think it was pretty "smart" about its auto fill (nothing other than content aware was used on the image and I was just messing around to test)

While not perfect, that is still pretty freaking impressive of a fix.

sikahunter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjRnE7vaZKk&playnext_from=TL&videos=OYNce6leaTU&feature=sub

Thecageyone

Yeah, pretty much figured that out just messing about with it. Re-trying over the same spots a couple of times often gives better results, like it's learning as it goes. It's still miles ahead of older clone tools.

plasticman3327

Fenster wrote: »

While not perfect, that is still pretty freaking impressive of a fix.

Yep again that was only using the content aware fill just to see what it was capable of so like you say not perfect.

Gives a great starting point though that would save a whole lot of editing time.

I wouldn't in practice ever alter an image to that level though....but thats a whole different conversation

Thecageyone

plasticman3327 wrote: »

As Dan and charybdis have said I don't know what you expected content aware to fill in there, its quite a complex out of focus background.

I just played with the white rabbit version. A quick 15 mins gave the attached . While not perfect I think it was pretty "smart" about its auto fill (nothing other than content aware was used on the image and I was just messing around to test)

In 15 mins I think you have proved it is a pretty brilliant tool. Would have taken hours otherwise!

Thecageyone

I just gave it a very quick go, literally 5 minutes. Picked a random image from my older files [actually one of 3 exposures from a HDR of this bridge I did] -







5 minutes! Did some weeding, even removed a tree from under the far side of the bridge and some inner graffiti on the inner wall Nothing special and nowhere near perfect, would take some more detailed cleaning up if I was bothered, but I'd have been too lazy to ever bother in the past, me thinks it's great.

Captain Flaps

Yeah, i've been playing with it for a little while, and once you accept the limitations and use it properly it's a savage tool. The sharper and less complicated your images, the better the results you'll get. I set my sights low on purpose after seeing the video ("yeah, it can't be THAT good") so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's nearly there

Thecageyone

The main thing for any 'jump-in-with-all-legs-flapping' users hoping for miracles, is to be aware yourself. What are you selecting? Is it a little close to another highly textured area? Have you been a little loose with your selection? If using the healing brush with content aware add, like I did solely for my example above, have you considered putting the brush circle more so over section you want to alter rather than more so over the section you want to keep? MAJOR difference.

learn the mood of content aware and work along with it. Don't expect it to do everything you desire, magically. because after all, it doesn't know WTF you're dreaming of achieving automatically!

red_ice

fs, never using any adobe products again. This CS5 lark is total crap, it doesnt project whats in my minds eye onto my computer screen instantly.

/format pc.

Thecageyone

Let you away with it as you're a Queens fan

5uspect

Heh it looks to me like they've taught PS to clone like a novice.
Maybe they'll get it right in a version or two!