Well big news this week with the launch of the new update to Photoshop CC 2015.5 !
Content aware crop is a super feature that I think will save lots of time when working on crop correction with some of your images. Take this image below.
This shot was taken in Mongolia at a Buzkashi, at one of the Nadaam’s outside of Ulgi (Western Mongolia). This event is fast paced and the scene is changing every second, so grabbing the perfect shot is challenging. I also shot this on a 90mm lens, so we were pretty close to the action.
One of my philosophies with photography is trying to fill the frame with activity and elements of the scene, in turn, my images tend to be quite tight to the edges (not to tight of course). In this case, the image horizon is not level, and neither are the horses. In this case I would normally leave the image alone and not do anything with it, as fixing it would take to long (probably more than 5 or 10 minutes, as well taking a few steps to correct the errors). However, with the new content aware crop tool, things now are managed for me and takes seconds, with just a single step.
When the image is rotated and the crop previewed (without the addition of content aware) the problem is evident.
The tail of the horse on the right hand side will be chopped off, as well as the nose of the left hand side horse. As soon as the Content-Aware check box is turned on, the canvas will be extended to accommodate the original aspect ratio and Photoshop CC will automatically manage any empty spaces that have been created.
Also Photoshop CC 2015.5 comes with performance and quality improvements to the content aware family, so the results should be significantly superior than before.
Final image, the crop is complete and the image is completely useable in just a few seconds of work.