Adobe CS5 Wizardry Part 1: Photoshop's New Content Aware Fill

I was given the opportunity yesterday to play around with Adobe's brand-spanking-new CS5 Creative Suite, and man, is it sweet. Was it $600 to upgrade, $1300 to buy sweet? I'll let you know once I download the 30-day trial ^_^.

Immediately upon opening Photoshop CS5, there was only one thing I wanted do: see if Content Aware Fill was all it had been hyped up to be. Let's face it, after watching the viral YouTube teaser video, it's fair to have doubts. In case any of you Adobe junkies didn't get a chance to check it out, here it is:

Pretty sweet, eh?

Ok, marketing magic aside, what can Content Aware Fill do for me, Mr. I only use Photoshop 2% of the time? Surprisingly, quite a lot in a very short amount of time.

To demonstrate my point, let's bring in my lovely, reluctant photo assisstant, (and girlfriend) Laura.

Laura before Content Aware CS5. Click for larger view.I chose this photo for Content Aware Fill because I felt it posed an interesting challenge for both myself and Photoshop CS5. Looking at this image and wanting to have anything removed from it while retaining a believable look would be nearly impossible for me for several reasons:

• Almost random patterning of stones
• Varying tones of both leaf and stone
• A deep shadow from the leaves in the area where Laura is about to be removed
• Deciding whether or not to keep the window and just drop out Laura, or throw it all out

Figuring it would be a supreme display of CS5's power, I decided on dropping the whole window, Laura included, out of the picture. Sure this would turn it into an old boring wall, but would Content Aware Fill make it look good?

Not wasting anymore time, I grabbed the smart select tool and track padded through my selection (like the n00b I am). Managing to also make use of Photoshop CS5's improved refine edge tool, I selected pretty tightly around the window and surounding stone and leaves. And as Bryan O'Neil Hughes would say, "We're just going to let Content Aware chew away at that," and apporximately 10 seconds later, I was greeted by the image you see below:

 Umm, where'd Laura go?

Content Aware CS5, you're awesome! Click for larger view.

 After picking my jaw up from off the floor, I quickly zoomed into full view of the 8Mp image to see just what exactly Content Aware Fill had done in, this seemingly effortless, 10 seconds of work. I'm about to get really nitpicky, so I suggest you also zoom into the image to your right (just click it ^_^). Wow, so Content Aware did an awesome job with the leaves. You can see it sampled from the less dense twigs from the top right corner and the larger out of focus leaves at the bottom; but other than that, the flow of the leaves seems to coincide with the rest of the image. Now let's move onto the stone. The right half of where Laura was looks outstanding! Good pattern continuity, variation of tones, and overall you can't tell there was the ridge of an open stone window there. The left half, however, is where we run into some problems. There's a lot of overly obvious sampling and discontinuous tones. My guess is it could have been brought about by three things:

• Shadow cast from the leaves above
• I didn't select enough of the leaves from the left side of the window frame
• Not enough stone was sampled from below the window frame

Overall, though, this image is definitely convincing, especially for internet resizing.

So, considering that I was able to do this in roughly 1 minute, start to finish, what does that mean for the rest of the Photoshop users out there? My guess, that things are about to get good with photo-retouching, scary good. What used to only be accomplished by paying an expert retoucher upwards of $100 per hour can be accomplished by an intern with a Bamboo tablet. Can/will this get out of control with what we are now able to effortlessly do to a photograph? In thinking this over, I'm reminded of an essay one of my art professors reccommended to me:

Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technologically Reproducability"

I'm sure everyone will have their own opinion of how Adobe Photoshop CS5 is changing the game, please be sure to leave a comment expressing your own feelings towards it. If there are enough comments, I'd love to revisit this topic sometime in the near future.

Thanks for reading, and remember, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is, and it's probably photoshop'd. ^_^

Put down the camera Uncle Bob.

It's no news that "everyone's a photographer", but over the past several months (years for most professionals), it's getting just plain ridiculous.  Dads at soccer games with Nikon D3's and 300 f/2.8's, chaperones at prom with Canon 5D Mark II's and fast primes, and uncle Bobs at weddings rockin' R-straps and Fong-spheres.  Are hobbyists ever going to draw the line and just stop trying to compete in the professionals' market?

For those who're reading this and scratching their heads a bit, let's start from the beginning.  A long-long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,(or about 2002), the professional photography world was starting to look toward the innovations that digital photography was bringing them. Popular 35mm camera manufacturers were starting to come out with higher resolution, more rugged digital bodies, and the medium format world was already starting to acknowledge the advantages of 25+ megapixel tethered capture. Many large volume, lower cost photography operations such as the one I work for were also starting to migrate, and even starting to utilize the power of the internet for their marketing and sales strategies. But a strange thing happened alongside this boom in professional volume; consumers who'd before not had access to high end film labs and expert developers now could rely on their personal computer to process images. This continuity between professionals and consumers has only increased with the larger scale by which digital photography has propagated itself into the digital lifestyle. What used to be a startup cost of several thousands of dollars could almost be had for several hundred. Image processing that used to cost up to $15 per roll of film could be had for the one time value of a memory card plus software.

This is Bob, at this particular event, it was the Father of the Bride!Add a few years of technology and about a few million emerging pro-sumers/ professionals to the mix, and you can see where there might start to be a problem. Let's not forget to include the plethora of image hosting sites that offer everyone FREE service (Flickr , SmugMug , Photobucket , to name a few). Wow, photography's not looking so bad now is it? This is exactly the thought which is catapulting thousands and thousands of otherwise normal, hardworking moms, dads, aunts, and uncles into the photography market. And who could blame them, right? Well, let's first lump "them" into a persona we can all identify with. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Uncle Bob.  And sorry Uncle Bob, but I can blame you! If you don't mind, sir, I'd like to ask you a few questions:

(I'm going to spend the rest of this post referring directly to Uncle Bob and those like him, so please bear with the aggressive statements that follow. ^_^ )

Question #1 - Wow, that's a nice new (insert DSLR here) Uncle Bob, so why are you here?

Truth is, you're not here because you want to be, you're here for what you think is saving you money in the long haul. "Oh my God," you thought, "there's no way I'm paying $10 for a 4x6 of my niece/nephew!" Or "Why would you pay $3000 for someone to photograph your wedding? I could buy my own gear for half that and shoot it as a wedding gift!"

Question #2 - Just what part of your little "investment" is saving you money?

Truth is, it isn't! Even though today's entry level DSLR's are cheap by professional standards, they're still at least a couple hundred bucks. That's not even including the mountain of accessories you may feel compelled to buy to look "professional".  And what happens if you manage to damage your gear in the midst of playing the pro? That's right, you eat even more of the cost. Let's not even consider the fact that you might be doing  weddings without the reassurance of backup equipment, good insurance, and good contract/lawyer.

Question #3 -  Furthermore, what part of this is saving you any of the time/hassle?

Uncle Bob, you already have a day-job. Why needlessly add more hours of work for something that's going to offer you little/no return, especially when there's probably already a professional on the job? Don't think it takes time? Consider travel time, shooting,  post processing, and uploading. Even with very little of all four, I know I'd rather spend a majority of that time not shooting for free.

Question #4 - Do you even really know what you're doing with your gear?

If your answer is no, I admire your honesty, but go ahead and add education to your totals for cost and time. If your answer is yes, why are you always standing behind/around me when I'm trying to take a shot at a job I'm being paid to do?

Am I being a tad overzealous on this topic? Hell Yes. Why? Because I'm sick of showing up to sporting events where I know I'm going to see more mom's with Canon 7D's than those with snacks for the players.  It's just plain rude to be constantly bumped by a random dad's monopod whilst he's creeping right behind me on the football sidelines.

So what can I as a pissed-off professional do to quash this onslaught of Uncle Bobbing? Why I can dress in bright colored clothing and passively ruin Bob's shot, just what any other mature adult would do. Honestly, it usually never comes to that, but as a preventative measure, I always have sassy-colored clothing on hand just in case. Don't believe me? Well, I wouldn't want to be called a liar. Just check out this Flickr set of an Uncle Bob's volleyball shots:

Wow, Uncle Bob certainly did take a lot of pictures ^o^

 Not only are the .jpeg's he's posting for free unprocessed, ill color-balanced, and often out of focus, you can probably see me in every single one of them. I usually never follow up on Uncle Bobs, but I just couldn't help myself. ^_^

Bottom line Uncle Bob, put down the camera and enjoy your life. There are already people being paid much less than you think to waste their time at your kid's game, wedding, or other drawn-out event. And if you're really in it for the love of photography, start off small, at home, or maybe while traveling. But if you're polite, respectful, and not planning on undercutting my territory, I'd be glad to help a fellow enthusiast out. Happy shooting Uncle Bob, please just don't interrupt my day job to ask what the heck ISO is.



Shooting kids, more fun than you'd expect...

Cliche, yes, but moms go ape over it. Logging into Facebook a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find a request from a high school friend.

"Hey! How are you old friend?! How are things going? Well by reading your info I guess you're a pretty damn good photographer, so you're definitely the man the job!"

0_0 Oh no, this was not going to bode well.

Well, it turned out it wasn't so bad. She was a new mom looking for some simple documentation of the newest edition to the family. So how was I going to shoot this? Would I bring the whole mobile studio and overshoot this poor little girl, or would I use a little photojournalistic style? The latter, hands down.

I learned a few things shooting a four-month old:

• Take a standard portrait. Sure you hate it, but most relatives require it. 
• Be patient and move away from the camera and regain baby's attention.
• Mom doesn't want to see herself, no matter how much you need her to hold her baby for that perfect pose.
• Use a telephoto! Those big blue baby eyes are big enough without wide angle. 
• Baby looking at the camera is great, but baby discovering the world around him/her...better!

Little Claire discovering dandelions for the first time.Wrapping up this baby shooting experience:

Was it fun? Yes.

Babies aren't picky models or fat businessmen who want to look 25 and skinny, they're babies. If you want to give a baby motivation, play peekabo with your SLR or tug at your cheeks.

Would I work with kids again? Maybe.

I got really lucky with a great set of clients, especially considering this was the first real kid shoot I've done.

If nothing else, this shoot has given me great respect for those that do this day in and day out.