Photoshop CS5's Showpiece — Content-Aware Fill 378
Barence writes "If you're looking for reasons to upgrade to Photoshop CS5 when it arrives, a new demo video might just persuade you. Narrated by Bryan O'Neil-Hughes, a product manager on the Photoshop team, the video shows the new content-aware fill tool, which has the potential to revolutionise the way you clean up photos. If you're not happy with an item in your picture, select it, delete it, and Photoshop will analyse the surrounding area and plug the gap as if it never existed."
Damn..... (Score:5, Funny)
Stalin would have just loved that content-aware fill tool.....
Re:Damn..... (Score:5, Funny)
So would Hitler, especially the part where the guy "removed a couple of Poles."
Early preorders are already in from (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox News and the Texas board of Education.
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Heh - is there a plug-in that inserts dinosaurs into the background of caveman photos? (nevermind the minor issue of not having photos from the prehistoric era)
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I'm reminded of the episode of Oz where somebody tries to tell a White Supremacist that Jesus wasn't white. He pulls out his bible and points to an illustration...
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I don't think it will work on text or video and besides, it's been easy to clone in dinosaurs since version 4.
Re:Early preorders are already in from (Score:5, Insightful)
Video is just a series of still pictures, that need to be interrelated. I'm certain that this could be applied to video, with enough processing power. If they can look at pixels that are neighboring in one frame, they can do it for pixels that are neighboring in time, too.
Re: Video applications (Score:3, Insightful)
The key thing is getting it not to chatter or flicker, which it probably will- as I doubt it will generate the exact same results frame to frame. Nevertheless- expect it to make matte painting, wire removal, etc a lot easier. I expect they'll use it to generate a quick starting point for clean plates, which will then be given further refinements and then composited in normally.
After watching the video and seeing obvious problems even at 360p, it seems unlikely it'd hold up at 2k without some love at least.
Ouroboros (Score:2, Offtopic)
Fox News and the Texas board of Education.
You know what's really funny? When those two collide [state.tx.us].
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For all the educational value they provide, it might as well be. But with beer instead of tea.
I'm convinced! (Score:3, Insightful)
Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective? It entered the land of exclusive pro tool years ago.
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:5, Insightful)
It entered the land of bittorrent download and piracy years ago.
There, fixed it for you.
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Everyone loves throwing that line around, but I've yet to meet a professional designer (freelancer or otherwise) who's paid for Photoshop, let alone "happily."
Greetings. I'm a 3d artist that does texture and post work, and I have happily paid for Photoshop and upgrades. My colleagues that do freelance have also paid for it 'happily'. You may now tick off that "haven't met any professionals' checkbox. :D
I suspect the $700 pricetag is Adobe's way of offsetting some of the losses incurred by piracy.
No. We pay that amount because it is an effective tool that we make money from. My copy of Photoshop paid for itself easily within the first gig I did. You could partially blame its successs on vendor lock-in. Most of my clients give me Photoshop files and ex
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Why is Gimp always brought up when talking about Photoshop competitors?
Because it's Open Source.
I understand the near future will take Gimp out of the domain of "programmers-who-like-to-do-graphics"
That doesn't really matter to GIMP fans - it being for programmers, and it being Open Source are why they like it.
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:4, Insightful)
"It entered the land of bittorrent download and piracy years ago."
Terrific viral marketing. No one who downloads it would have bought it with own funds, but many will do so with company money. Adobe allowing "controlled leakage" is the best free marketing campaign since Office 97 went from workplace "to the house" and back again.
Re:I'm convinced! (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Adobe doesn't make their money on hobbyists. They don't even really make their money on small shops. They make their money on mega corporations who buy a dozen licenses because they need to crop photos, and their employees all know how to do that in Photoshop, because they've pirated every version since 5.5.
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I can still get "education" pricing on it for $199.00 and any fool can get an education copy bought for them. Who cares about "technically legal" I got a license key and the box and it updates, that's all that matters.
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If it's like any of the other fancy healing tools, it'll make its way into the $99 PhotoShop Elements. The existing magic healing brush did.
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Photoshop currently sells at a "lightweight" $700. How many photos would I have to edit to make that cost effective?
One. That's why I have a legit copy of Photoshop.
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$700 is not all that much for someone making or paying Western wages
I must be making Eastern wages then, because $700 has long since crossed into the if not major certainly not minor purchase category for me. When you exceed 1% gross annual income (And $70k isn't a small salary) that IS a significant purchase.
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Well honestly I do think $700 is a lot for me. Although I make a great living, one doesn't keep his wealth by spending it frivolously. For a business it's a no-brainer, it's a great tool for the pro. But for me? It's not worth it. I'd rather just download paint.net and use the features I can get for free. But that's just my take. Obviously it's worth something to someone otherwise they'd be out of business. Don't mind me, I'm just being cantankerous.
Having watched the whole thing to the end... (Score:2)
I call Shenanigans. Someone has released this video a few days early.
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Re:Having watched the whole thing to the end... (Score:4, Informative)
A few days ago I was reading about some of the algorithms for doing this [ucla.edu], shown at Siggraph in recent years. I think it's real.
Re:Having watched the whole thing to the end... (Score:5, Funny)
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I’m not so sure. How’d it know that the small hill on the right side of the picture should go down in the new area it created? How’d it know that the horizon on the left edge should go up?
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But the one on the left side isn’t.
So how’d it know to mirror the right side but extend the left side without reflecting the angle?
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Perhaps but even so, it’s not really a mirror image of the hill/valley to the left of it.
Like I said, I’m skeptical. This little tiny video isn’t high enough resolution to tell whether it’s any good, anyway.
Watch the vid in the article (Score:2)
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I shant comment on what you do - after all, somebody needs naked midgets inserted into pictures of White House dinners - but looking at that video, I'm struck with the fact they they didn't zoom in at all. In the tiny little YouTube frame on a coarse monitor, you could hide flesh ripping raptors in the repair and it wouldn't be visible. In fact, if you look closely, you can see some bad edges even at this resolution.
Now maybe this
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I'm an American, you insensitive clod!
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http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0711/oecd-broadband-speed-country.png [websiteoptimization.com]
Re:Watch the vid in the article (Score:4, Funny)
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Nope not put you out of a job, just lower your wages to $8.95 an hour because monkeys can now do your job.
Welcome to what us in Photography have had to deal with. I just saw an AD on the TV for a mall photo studio that will give you 20 shots in their studio for $9.95. and 8X10 prints start at $4.95 each. Yes I know it's done by no talent kids or minimum wage people, but the average consumer does not know that. They still think that it's all in the cost of the equipment and has nothing to do with skill an
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Google Street View (Score:5, Interesting)
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Then I'd wonder why they aren't using it, opting instead to blur faces?
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Sounds like something Google Street View could use to remove people from their views and make them more acceptable.
And then a bug occurs and only black people gets erased and they're screeeeewed!
Nice Demo... (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish there was a paper on the core algorithms behind it (cmon Adobe, SIGGRAPH), but I could see why Adobe may be sitting on every aspect of this tool; because it sure seems to bring some real photoshop wizardry to the common user. It was really an example of "delete this thing" and it just works. Takes a common complex task and massively simplifies it. One of the most impressive marketing demos I've seen in a while.
Sure, there are some cases in which I doubt it works, but from what I could see, it seemed to have some vision and perceptual rules built in to guide how to fill in the deleted area. And frankly, it's a feature that for professionals, makes the price tag for the upgrade worth it. For some tasks, it'd pay for itself in labor alone. What would take a expert hours to do, this could do in minutes. If I was Adobe, I'd seriously consider taking this and make a Photoshop Elements Extended Edition (or whatever) and add about 79-99 bucks to this price for this feature alone. Arguably, it'd be worth it for many.
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A random bookmark I happened to have, here [umn.edu].
This isn't quite the same issue, the focus is on scratch removal, but it's close.
Re:Nice Demo... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here [princeton.edu]'s the paper, from a comment above.
Enhance (Score:5, Funny)
Next up is the "CSI Enhance" tool. Take a photo of 10x10 pixels, and make it a perfect 2MP image.
Re:Enhance (Score:5, Funny)
They can call it Adobe Homeopathy.
Re:Enhance (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Enhance (Score:5, Funny)
"CSI Enhance" tool
I can see the fingerprint in the reflection on his eyeball, it must be the killer!
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Clearly, that's over the top, but you'd be surprised at the sorts of super-resolution techniques that are out there already. Most (but not all) techniques require multiple frames of the same image with enough jitter from one frame to the next so that what you lose in spatial sampling you make up in temporal sampling.
The most important question (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what sort of a fig leaf it will use to plug the gap in the goatse photo...
For the doubters... (Score:3, Insightful)
One damn tool - pay for 200 unnecessary ones (Score:2)
isnt the way with the software companies these days ? fill a software with innumerable features even professionals will rarely use, and ask $60-100 for 20 to 30 functions/features that people will use, because you also put there 180 or so ones that noone will use.
that's why software is being pirated. noone wants to shell out $60 for 200 functions 20 of which they will use from time to time.
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Yup. I had a friend that bought Photoshop CS2 for the NoiseNinja plugin... I pointed out one day that he could have bought Noiseninja as a stand alone and skipped paying the several hundred for Photoshop and he about freaked.
Re:One damn tool - pay for 200 unnecessary ones (Score:5, Insightful)
noone wants to shell out $60 for 200 functions 20 of which they will use from time to time.
Personally, I'll shell out. I make a living using photoshop and I support the idea that a bunch of extremely talented software engineers ought to be able to make a living developing it.
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my point is, even a web designer, or a visual designer doesnt use majority of those functions in photoshop. and those talented software engineers would make much more money, if they sold their product smartly, by giving out only what customers need for a cheaper price, and then offering all features as addons for minimal prices.
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...because you also put there 180 or so ones that noone will use.
Peter Noone, great grandfather of Doctor McCoy: "I'm a musician, dammit, not a photographer!"
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yeah (Score:2)
a product for 'home user market' is sold from $100. you are gonna buy one, and 3-4 times a year you are going to rotate, crop and apply a few effects to your kids' photos.
no wonder it is being pirated.
Bye "Mom"! (Score:2)
It'll be a great "mother-in-law" tool for family photos.
Lens Flares (Score:5, Funny)
Using Photoshop to remove lens flares? Oh! Brave new world!
-Peter
Re:Lens Flares (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. Wow. I never dreamed that anyone would find that obscure. For example. [penny-arcade.com]
-Peter
I'll believe it when (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a 12 megapixel image in hand of a before and after and not a tiny less than 400 pixel overcompressed youtube video.
I have seen this automatic stuff before and when you look carefully at it it's not very clean unless you re-sample down to 1/4 the resolution or go small for web use.. it's never clean enough to print out at 11X17 or larger.
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Re:I'll believe it when (Score:5, Insightful)
Photoshop Story (Score:3, Funny)
I once did a writing contract at Adobe. You know how when you pose for an ID photo, they put you in front of a curtain or something to hide the background? When I got my Adobe badge the security guy just posed me against a regular wall, then Photoshopped the wall out of the picture!
Great for crime shows! (Score:4, Funny)
I can't wait until a crime show gets ahold of this.
"Delete that wall and see what is behind it. Enhance. Enhance. Enhance."
Another youtube video about content-aware fill (Score:5, Informative)
Includes more detail about the algo
- Developed with researches at Princeton
- Demo'd at SIGGRAPH in Aug. 2009
- Old spot-healing tool tried to find one match for the hole; new tool copies multiple patches from the surrounding BG to fit into the hole, as well as finding & copying surrounding patterns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9vbHRcrbdQ&feature=related [youtube.com]
Been there, done that (for free) (Score:2)
These are graph-cut or similar algorithms. There are several free alternatives which have been out there for years. Two spring straight to mind - the resynthesizer plugin for the GIMP and GREYCStoration image inpainting.
CS5 seems to have made this easier to use but the functionality has existed for ages.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Gimp Resynth (Score:3, Informative)
That capability has been available for a while in the Gimp as part of the Resynth plugin:
http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer [logarithmic.net]
It lets you resynthesize a texture, fill in a selection with surrounding content, and synthesize images "in the theme" of another image.
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I take it you didn't watch the video then?
this is worthless (Score:2)
For what it’s worth... (Score:2)
I found a higher-resolution (cropped) copy of the panorama used in the video:
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/7_deathvalley.jpg [scottkelby.com]
(According to the description here [scottkelby.com], photomerge, dodge, burn, and sponge were used, but basically only the colours have been changed.)
Composite I made of image from YouTube video + image from the blog: here [imagehost.org]
One word: wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just "wow". Everyone who has spent tedious hours "fixing" some piece of "almost" perfect photography just fell off of their chairs.
I haven't bothered upgrading anything but InDesign in recent years - the old Photoshop (or even GIMP) was good enough. This is a reason to upgrade!
Re:STOP! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:STOP! (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't call this an ad. This is legitimately really fucking cool.
So is the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser...
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Did you watch it? This is really cool technology.
Frankly if I'm not coming to Slashdot to see the latest and greatest toys, technology, and, yes, products then what is the point...
The Difference Between an Ad and "Holy Crap!!" (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm usually among the first in line to call Slashdot on its thinly-disguised slashvertisements, but this goes beyond product upgrade and into the realm of William Gibson novel.
I'm kind of staggered just trying to wrap my head around the uses and implications...
Re:The Difference Between an Ad and "Holy Crap!!" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Altered reality? (Score:4, Funny)
No, no. Goodbye to all my exes in my vacation photos. Stupid real dolls blocking the scenery.
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My binary is an ELF! It was different before, but that's a.out.
Re:I for one (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, and cars have already had the native ability to drive, turn and stop for a century. The DARPA Grand Challenge isn't really adding anything new.
Those robotic cars are basically just intelligent automated versions of cars, on steroids.
Just because it happens in software does not make it trivial.
Re:I for one (Score:4, Informative)
Liquid rescale is an implementation of the Seam Carving technology which was incorporated into Photoshop CS4 as a feature titled Content Aware Scale.
This new feature comes from an algorithm titled PatchMatch which was presented at SIGGRAPH 2009:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/pubs/Barnes_2009_PAR/index.php [princeton.edu]
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Welcome my "getting modded Insightful for not RTFA and spreading bullshit" overlords at Slashdot.
Content-aware scaling has been included in Photoshop since CS4.
But this is no scaling, it's filling. The first 3 minutes of the video are not so interesting (nothing one could not do with a clone stamp in 2 seconds), but the last 2 minutes are breath-taking.
GREYCstoration or liquidrescale don't even come close.
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It's not the same. Liquid Rescale moves the pieces by rescaling around them. This actually replaces just the exact area. I think it's quite a bit more useful, but in different ways.
Re:I for one (Score:5, Interesting)
What about Resynthesizer? Well.. example within (Score:5, Informative)
It's a very cool GIMP plugin for some things, but...
This is my source image:
http://s3.images.com/huge.28.142421.JPG [images.com]
I want to remove the lady on the right, so I select her:
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/1346/resynthesizerselection.jpg [imageshack.us]
And then, per the Resynthesizer page's recommendations, I use "Script-Fu/Enhance/Smart remove selection..."
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/228/resynthesizerresultradi.jpg [imageshack.us]
Oh dear.
Anybody with access to the Photoshop beta feature want to give that image a stab? For all I know it fails just as spectacularly - but from the research it's based on, I highly suspect it'll fare better.
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Considering that the regular image clone tool did that in one click [imagehost.org] (well, not counting tracing a selection and setting the clone source), I don’t think it’s a very good test image.
(I used GIMP, not PS, if it makes a difference.)
Re:What about Resynthesizer? Well.. example within (Score:4, Interesting)
darn blockquote fail :)
I know I picked it out - what about it?
I didn't pick it out to specifically make Resynthesizer fail - it's image #2 on images.google.com for 'person in field' (sans quotes).
For an example that does work with Resynthesizer, try:
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/0f/33/e2/so-cool.jpg [tripadvisor.com]
Select the top-left dark thing, run the Resynthesizer script-fu - voila... dark thing removed, and sky filled in pretty well.
The problem is that this is entirely hit-or-miss.. and it's far more often miss than hit.. and then -when- it is a miss, it's a spectacular miss (as in that person-in-field image).
Re:What about Resynthesizer? Well.. example within (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what I get using the plugin on its own: http://shishnet.org/ufufuf/resynth2.jpg [shishnet.org]
Do note that the script-fu wrapper works better for larger images, which this isn't
Also, the example from the video, done with gimp instead, the results are pretty similar (IMO, better, but I'm pretty sure that the "improvements" are just luck): http://shishnet.org/ufufuf/panorama-synth.png [shishnet.org]
Having been using the resynthesizer for years, I've developed a knack for which source images will work well and which won't, and the thing that struck me about that video was that the source images are pretty much ideal conditions -- I'll be impressed when they can get good results on the images that aren't so clean :-)
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Just tried expanding a panorama as in the demo too, and resynthesizer does that pretty well too (please ignore the fact that the source material is REALLY shittily exposed, it was shot on a mobile phone with no manual exposure mode :( ):
original [shishnet.org]
expanded [shishnet.org]
Re:What about Resynthesizer? Well.. example within (Score:4, Informative)
obvious question: workflow / parameters?
Generally I use the foreground select tool* to select the smallest area to cover the object, then grow selection by a few pixels so that none of the object's edges are poking out and confusing it, then filters - map - resynthesize (ie, use the plugin rather than the script), and have the "tilable" options disabled since they tend to grab samples from the opposite edge of the image (if I want a tilable image, I'll use the tiling filter separately...)
Probably the biggest factor for simple success is to have the object you want to remove be on its own (surrounded on all sides by similar textures) -- if it isn't, then you need to do things the long way -- eg, if you want to remove the leftmost wheelchair from this [shishnet.org] image, and you want it to be replaced by grass when three of its borders are touching non-grass, then you'll find that it ends up somewhat messy [shishnet.org] since it attempts to merge four different edge textures. In this case you'll need to copy a section of your desired fill texture (ie, a rectangle of pure grass) into a separate image (specifically, a single layer image with no transparency); then on the original image select the object to remove, open resynthesizer, and select the "fill texture" image as the texture source; this way the generated texture will both match the surroundings of the original as much as possible, while being filled with the "surroundings" that you've specifically chosen. Having taken a sample of "pure grass" and a sample of "pure stone", then removing the top and bottom halves of the wheelchair with each respectively, the results are nicer [shishnet.org]. (with the exception that the first two images were produced with a mouse and twenty minutes of careful selecting, and the final one was 5 minutes work with a laptop nipple, so there are still some bits of wheelchair poking out of the sides...)
Incidentally, does photoshop have SIOX [siox.org] yet? Having the features "vaguely scribble in the general area of an object to have the object selected precisely" and "automatically and realistically remove a selection" could potentially combine to form "one-click realistic object removal" \o/
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Get the resynth plugin:
http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer [logarithmic.net]
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I am, and I thought it looked rather blurry when he was removing the tree trunks in that first image. In fact the first one he removed he had to undo and do it over again because it didn’t look right.
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Before anybody else replies to tell me I’m wrong, I’d like to clarify that I couldn’t hear the dialogue (no speakers) so I didn’t realise that he’d used the healing brush (not the content-aware fill) for the first stroke.
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This was very clearly explained in the voiceover.
That explains it, then: I don’t have sound. I didn’t notice that he switched tools. My apologies.
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