Month: March 2021

Today’s Question: What advantages does Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill have over “Spot Removal” in Lightroom Classic?

Tim’s Quick Answer: The Content-Aware Fill feature in Photoshop provides improved quality of the cleanup results along with better control over which source areas will be used to construct the cleanup pixels, compared to the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic.

More Detail: The Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic is most similar to the Healing Brush tool in Photoshop. There is a degree of blending to help the cleanup pixels blend in with the surrounding area where you are removing a blemish, but that blending is not as sophisticated as that provided by the content-aware technology in Photoshop.

In effect, the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic simply copies pixels from the source area to the destination area, and then blends the pixel values so that, for example, the color will match more closely. So, you could copy the texture from a blue area of an image to a green area of the image, and the texture would shift to green to match the destination area.

The content-aware technology in Photoshop provides a similar benefit, but with a more sophisticated approach. The overall image can be evaluated, and then various pixel areas are actually combined. In effect, Photoshop creates a new texture based on other textures found throughout the image. This can create a much more accurate cleanup with less risk of the appearance of repeated patterns in the image caused by an exact copy of pixels as is done initially with the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic.

In addition, when you use the Content-Aware Fill command in Photoshop (Edit > Content-Aware Fill), you have the option to select a custom area from within the image to be used for building up the image cleanup area. You start by creating a selection of the area you want to clean up. Then choose Edit > Content-Aware Fill. You can then choose Custom for the Sampling Area Options section, and paint to define which areas of the image will or will not be used for sampling textures for the cleanup.

Another feature I really like about the Content-Aware Fill command in Photoshop, by the way, is that you can choose to place the new cleanup pixels on a new image layer, so it is easy to maintain a non-destructive workflow where you place cleanup pixels on a layer separate from the underlying image.

Today’s Question: Do you recommend adding exported images to the Lightroom Classic catalog?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In general no, I do not recommend adding photos exported from Lightroom Classic back to the catalog. However, there are times when doing so may be beneficial.

More Detail: I think it is fair to say that most of the time when you export a photo from Lightroom Classic it is for purposes of sharing that photo in some way. You might be sending a high-resolution copy to a printer to be printed, or preparing a smaller JPEG image to include in a blog article, or otherwise creating a copy of the source image for purposes of sharing in some way.

My view is that adding those derivative images back to your Lightroom Classic catalog will add clutter, possibly create confusion, and not likely provide any significant benefit. I normally recommend that when you need to share an image that you return to the source image to create a new copy for sharing, rather than making use of a previously created derivative image. This helps ensure, for example, that any recent changes you’ve applied to the original image will be reflected in the new derivative.

That said, there are certainly scenarios where you may prefer to add an exported photo back to the Lightroom Classic catalog, which can be achieved by turning on the “Add to This Catalog” checkbox in the Export Location section of the Export dialog.

For example, in the March 2021 issue of Pixology magazine I wrote an article about a workflow that provides an alternative to the use of virtual copies in Lightroom Classic, helping to reduce dependency on the catalog. In this type of scenario, you may very much want to have the newly created copy of the source image added back to the catalog.

However, I recommend exercising caution when it comes to adding exported copies of photos back to the Lightroom Classic catalog. More often than not I find that doing so leads to clutter and confusion with minimal benefit.

Today’s Question: Why is there a “Content-Aware” checkbox on the Options bar for the Crop tool? I thought that was only a feature for image cleanup tools like the Spot Healing Brush.

Tim’s Quick Answer: The Content-Aware option for the Crop tool makes it possible to have Photoshop fill in empty areas created if you expand or transform the crop beyond the existing image area, causing empty areas to be added to the canvas. With the Content-Aware checkbox turned on, those areas will be filled in automatically using the content-aware technology that we typically associate with the image cleanup tools in Photoshop.

More Detail: The content-aware technology in Photoshop is something you may only associate with the image cleanup tools, since cleaning up blemishes in an image represents one of the greatest advantages of the content-aware technology. However, this same capability is also available with the Crop tool.

Typically, cropping is a process that involves removing pixels from an image. You might crop to cut out an unwanted area of a photo, or to match a specific aspect ratio wanted for printing or other forms of sharing a photo. However, you can also extend the crop box beyond the boundary of a photo to add additional space to the image.

In addition, you can apply perspective correction and other transformation adjustments with the Crop tool, causing the overall image to no longer be rectangular in shape. In this case, there is also a chance you may want to have the crop box extend beyond the existing edge of the photo, in order to maintain certain areas within the image that would otherwise be cropped out.

If a crop results in empty areas beyond the existing image area, by default those areas will either be filled with the current background color or with transparency, depending on whether you’re working on a Background versus normal image layer and depending on whether the “Delete Cropped Pixels” checkbox on the Options bar is turned on.

You can have Photoshop fill those “new” areas of the image automatically using the content-aware image cleanup technology by turning on the “Content-Aware” checkbox before applying the crop.

Note that this approach doesn’t provide you with the most flexibility in your workflow, which can be problematic if the additional pixels created by the content-aware feature don’t blend in especially well in the image. Therefore, you might instead consider cropping with the Content-Aware checkbox turned off, and then create a selection of the empty area of the image and use the Content-Aware Fill command (Edit > Content-Aware Fill) to fill that area with greater control and flexibility, including the option to have the pixels created by this process placed on a separate image layer.