Content-Aware Scale Tool

Sometimes, it works just fine to use Free Transform to scale things down, and other times it doesn’t work and things look squished. In the photo in Figure 2.41 for example, I tried to scale down the photo to make it less wide.

Figure 2.41 The original photo is too wide.

However, if I simple select everything and use Free Transform, the photo just looks squished and unnatural (Figure 2.42).

Figure 2.42 Free Transform creates an unnatural squished effect.

The Content-Aware Scale feature does a better job of this, especially if we do a little preparation. First, make a loose selection around the areas you do not want to be scaled: in this case, the couple (Figure 2.43).

Figure 2.43 Make a rough selection around the area you don’t want to scale.

From the Photoshop menu bar, choose Select > Save Selection and Deselect and then choose Edit > Content-Aware Scale. Before moving any handles, go to the Options bar and choose Alpha 1 from the Protect menu. The selection you saved will be called Alpha 1 unless you renamed it. Because we’re trying to protect the couple from being affected, click the “men’s washroom” symbol (OK, that’s not its official name, it’s just what my weird mind sees every time I look at it). Now, when you drag the scaling handles inwards, the areas other than the couple are scaled, and every effort is made to preserve the size of the couple (Figure 2.44).

Figure 2.44 With Content-Aware Scale, the background is scaled but the couple is not.

Here’s another quick example of a great use for Content-Aware Scale: extending an area to give yourself move pixels to work with. After adding more canvas to the image, I selected a large area and then used Content-Aware Scale to stretch the selection to fill the image. With a background like this studio wall, the results are ideal (Figure 2.46).

Figure 2.45 Selecting an area to scale.

Figure 2.46 Using Content-Aware Scale to add more pixels to work with.

As with many Photoshop functions, Content-Aware Scale often works very well—to a point. In this example with the couple, if we continued to scale down the image, the couple would start to look a little distorted. So use Content-Aware Scale with a touch of caution.