Similarly, the 3D creation and editing features introduced with CS4 Extended have been revamped into a full 3D editing program, with the ability to import 3D objects from programs like 3D Studio and manipulate them within Photoshop. While Content-Aware Move could prove useful under certain circumstances, better results can be obtained by careful use of other tools. If there's the slightest degree of non-random detail in the background, the results look very crude. It only works well with a very specific type of image, one where the bulk of the scene is made up of uniform textures, such as a cow standing in a green field or a single tree with the plain blue sky as a background. I spent some time trying this feature, but to be honest I was rather disappointed by most of the results.
The program then fills in the area from which it was moved based on a sampling of the surrounding scene. Content-Aware Move uses the same technology, and allows a selected element to be moved to another part of the image.
The Content-Aware Fill feature was added in Photoshop CS5, and proved to be very useful for filling in low-detail areas in cropped images and removing unwanted objects from scenes. It is also used in the updated Liquify and Lighting Effects filters.Īnother much-touted new feature is the Content-Aware Move, which is added under the Spot Healing brush on the tool palette. This uses hardware graphics acceleration to produce the real-time previews. It is able to do this thanks to another new feature, the Mercury graphics engine. The new blur options also feature new controls that let you dial in the amount of blur and the limits of the mask and feathering by dragging markers around on the screen, while the filter effect preview updates in real time. While the first two might certainly have their uses, the Tilt Shift effect only really works on photos of things like cars or buildings shot from a high angle, and once you've done it a couple of times the novelty, such as it is, wears off. Field Blur allows you to set specific levels of blur at multiple selected points on the image, Iris Blur lets you create an adjustable blur everywhere except one specified area, while Tilt-Shift blur adds that "miniature photo" filter effect that Ricoh must really wish it had patented when it first introduced it on the CX2 compact camera back in 2009. Previous versions have offered several different ways to intentionally add blur to your images, but CS6 adds three more. One feature that has received a lot of attention is the Blur function. Photoshop automatically saves your work to a temporary file at pre-determined intervals, by default ten minutes. As good as Photoshop is, like any very complex program, it can crash unexpectedly, but now that doesn't have to mean losing an hour's worth of unsaved work. One massively useful new feature is one of the least glamorous. Of course, if you don't like all these great new features, you have the option to revert to "classic" crop mode, but why on Earth would you want to? As well as this, the Crop Tool now incorporates a Straighten tool, to automatically level horizons and straighten buildings. The crop frame has multiple overlays to aid composition, including "rule of thirds", the golden ratio and golden spiral, diagonals, triangles and a simple grid, and most of these can be customised to some extent. You now have the option to crop non-destructively, so you can go back and make corrections later. When you rotate the crop, for example to level the horizon, the crop frame remains stationary and the image rotates under it, giving a much more useful preview of the cropped image. First, when you move the crop lines, the view automatically centres itself on the centre of the crop. I must have used a crop tool a thousands of times in dozens of different graphics programs, but every single one of the new CS6 Crop Tool features made me think "why has nobody done it this way before?". My next favourite feature is the completely re-worked Crop Tool.