Back in April I mentioned that I was beta testing Photoshop CS5, and it had some new features that were pretty amazing. Adobe Photoshop has been around for over 20 years, and I personally have been using it since version 2.5—around 1992 (the current version, called CS5, is actually version 12). There have been stellar new features introduced in previous versions, but this time Adob hit a home run.
The CS5 update was officially released on April 30, and one of the most talked about new features is Content Aware Fill. With Photoshop (and Photoshop Elements) it has always been possible to edit out unwanted parts of an image, but Content Aware Fill has made the process much simpler. It isn’t always perfect, and sometimes the image needs a bit of touching up, but for anyone who has ever tried to remove a telephone wire, or other obstruction from a photograph, this will blow you away. The photos below show the original, the in between, and the finished image. The photo isn’t all that good, but it provided a good example for when you might want to remove something in a photo.
The original photo, on the left has a distracting branch in the upper left corner. Working on the background layer, I made a selection of the area that I wanted changed, and then pressed the delete key, which opens the Content Aware Fill dialog box. Click OK and the feature starts to work. 
After about a minute, the selected area is replaced by content surrounding the selection—and in such a way that it is difficult to tell that it doesn’t belong. With this image, no further editing of the upper-left corner was necessary!
Being able to delete parts of an image with so little effort does make one think about the “reality” of photos printed in newspapers and magazines. If you want to see an example of a pretty radical use of Content Aware Fill, take a look at this photo by professional photographer Rick Sammon. He claims to have used Content Aware Fill to delete over 80 people from the scene!
This is absolutely amazing.