Understanding the Content-Aware Move Tool in Photoshop

On this video Photoshop expert Jesús Ramirez (from the Photoshop training channel) demonstrates how you can create and apply Bokeh Overlays in Photoshop.

You might think that the content aware move tool is a pretty basic tool – you pick your object and move it to a different location in the frame and Photoshop will fill the empty space and make sure your object is blended correctly. Well, it turns out that there is actually more.

One cool thing that you can do is scale and rotate your object – this can be pretty useful but you need to make sure “transform on drop” marked (so if you want to do this – turn this box off).

Another interesting feature of the move tool is called extend (this is a secondary tool within the move tool which is a  bit different). Using this feature you can make things longer or shorter but you can also duplicate objects in a picture.

Structure and color are the two main settings that you have with the move tool – the structure – which represents how closely will the content aware pattern match the image and color adjust the color to match the area where you moved your object. Note that you can control the numbers of structure and color even after you move the object as long as the object is still selected.

We have looked at the move tool in the past in  Nathaniel Dodson video “How to Use the Move Tool in Photoshop” and in  Howard Pinsky’s video – “How to Move Objects in Photoshop in Under 1 Min“.

Bonus video: How To Use Content Aware Fill in Photoshop – Advance Method

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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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