Adobe is showing off a new sneak peek tech preview. This time, it’s a completely overhauled Content-Aware Fill interface that offers a great deal of control over the existing Content-Aware Fill feature. The old one is there if you want it, but the new one makes it a whole lot more powerful.
The new interface pops up when you choose Content-Aware Fill from the menu. It looks a little intimidating at first, but the video shows that it’s fairly straightforward. And you see a live preview of your changes while you’re doing them. On the far right is a panel with all of your options.
Masking
Masking is a great feature which allows you to actively choose which areas of the image you want Content-Aware Fill to sample from. It is possible to do something like this now, but it involves a lot of workarounds with masks and multiple layers. Being able to do it interactively from right within the new UI will make life much simpler. And this change alone will be a huge benefit to a lot of people.
Sensei AI
The Sensei AI features look like they’ve really come along. It can now automatically rotate and scale sampled areas of an image in order to fill in the detail and make it fit into the rest of the image. This also features a mirroring option, which allows the tool to completely flip parts of an image to try to make them match elsewhere.
Non-destructive
One of the other great features of the new tool, and one that solves an annoyance I’ve had since Content-Aware Fill was first added to Photoshop is that it can now be used non-destructively. You can output your newly generated pixels either to the current layer, to a duplicate version of the layer, or a completely blank layer.
Adobe hasn’t said exactly when the new Content-Aware Fill tool will be added into Photoshop, just that it will be coming soon. Looking at the tech demo, it looks much improved over the current system and will be a welcome addition for those regularly using Content-Aware Fill.
