Advanced Content-Aware Scale in Photoshop

On this video Photoshop expert Jesús Ramirez (from the Photoshop training channel) demonstrates advanced methods for using the content aware scale tool.

Content aware scale allows you to stretch or compact image dimensions but to keep the important data intact. This can be super important when you are forced to have specific dimensions or specific aspect ratio which is different from the one of your original image (for web/social media or print). You can find “content aware scale” under the edit menu in Photoshop (it has quite a long shortcut – which you can find there).

You have a number of option on the top when you choose Content-Aware Scale – including skin tones protection and pixels in the image as well as the amount of content aware will be used on the image. Ramirez also shows some more advanced ways of protecting areas in an image so that part will not be scaled if there is a specific area which you don’t want Photoshop to change.

We actually prefer the classic crop tool in Photoshop but we are aware that it is limited in the sense that it does not support the new content aware scale when cropping so if we need this feature we have to add the content aware manually.

We have looked at the content aware scale quite a few times in the past –  Aaron Nace from Phlearn did a video on the subject a while back (and one on using content aware scale to stretch images) and so did Photoshop senior product manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes (at the time) who published one of our all time viewed videos here on LensVid entitled “Changing Orientation From Portrait to Landscape in Photoshop“.

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section. You can also check some of Ramirez previous videos published here on the site on the following link.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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