Photoshop's Upcoming Content-Aware Fill Feature Looks Like Magic

Wow!

I'm really in two minds about this. It's an amazing tool, and will save many hours of manual work, but as a (out of work at the moment) graphic designer it's quite worrying.

I used to be one of the best at photo retouching and manipulation in my department, and i loved doing it. Some of the work would require the patience of a saint. I would (sometimes) spend days on one image, working my so called magic. Now by the looks of it anyone will be able to do it! And that could be quite worring whilst trying to find employment.

It is remarkable though...

reply to post by D.E.M.


Wow, wow, wow, wow!

It's so true that today it's almost impossible to believe any picture.

With that Content Aware fill, any amateaur can start editing photos! It has really been made so simple!

Seriously, that's crazy!

If we stick to the old 30 year rule of thumb between government and public technology. Which I believe is fairly accurate give or take 5 years.

They have had this tech since the mid 80's.

Think of all the news pictures and video you have seen since then. No photo or video can be trusted.

Imagine what they have now! Which the public won't see till 2030-2035.

Lets just take 9/11 for instance. If they used this "Content Aware Fill" and coupled it with the tech in the 2008 you tube video of the guy with facial hair and no facial hair. Hell anything is possible.

Now think if they can do THIS on the visual end imagine what they can do with audio. Childs play. Voice copying. Where one might think they are hearing thier son or daughter, or Wifes exact voice, perfect inflextions and use of voice manuerisms, and you might be talking to an agent, or even a computer.

This is terrifying.

They can also go back and retool old photos and video the public has never seen before and basically rewrite history. Oh look, up pops long lost hidden footage of a shooter on the grassy knoll? No problem.

All photo and video can now and forever NOT be trusted, unless you took it yourself.

It will get to the point where you won't even be able to trust a damned thing unless you've seen and heard it with your OWN eyes and ears.

Yes there are good uses for this, but also nefarious uses. Just as a gun can be used to hunt and feed your village, it can also be used to kill someone from a distance and not be caught.

This is makeing me rethink EVERYTHING I've seen on the television or in Newspaper and/or magazine photos.

No longer will the Enquirer or the Sun even need papparatzi(sp?) All they need is this and a large amount of old backround photos of people they wish to put in sticky situations.

I like the poster who said they could put your face (useing an old discarded photo, or even one from Highschool yearbooks, or DMV archives) and place YOU as the killer in a murder scene video.......

When you think of what they have now, if they are giving THIS to the public..., the thought is truely frightening. At least to me.

Oh yea....I forgot to add...I wonder:

Can it remove clothing?

This is good stuff, but it isn't so revolutionary. It can be done with photoshop cs 4 90 % of the time. It will be slower but it can be done. This algorithm takes the pixels from the existing picture. It doesn't magically fill. It guesses some parts but it relies on the existing. As for the ufo pictures being more real I dont see why.
They are probably done in some 3d program then incorporated in the picture with photoshop cs.

As for video editing there are simiar tools.

[edit on 25/3/10 by defiler]

reply to post by D.E.M.


the conspiracist in me is thinking we've had this technology for at least a decade...very handy tool in airbrushing out anomalies

[edit on 25-3-2010 by reject]

Originally posted by defiler
This is good stuff, but it isn't so revolutionary. It can be done with photoshop cs 4 90 % of the time. It will be slower but it can be done. This algorithm takes the pixels from the existing picture. It doesn't magically fill. It guesses some parts but it relies on the existing. As for the ufo pictures being more real I dont see why.
They are probably done in some 3d program then incorporated in the picture with photoshop cs.
[edit on 25/3/10 by defiler]

What are you talking about? Sure it uses some pixels from the existing photo, But i mean did you even SEE those clouds? I mean come on. The way it filled in those clouds and made them look REAL was absolutely brilliant. The algorithm is just a huge WOW factor. It looked real. That algorithm works wonders...

I think we're back to trusting individual photos only if they are taken with a film camera. At least then it's easier to pick out fakes, negatives are hard to mess with and not leave evidence. If we're talking digital images then i will only accept something if it is taken from multiple angles, by different people, who do not know one another.

Yeah this technique is great for sure, saves a lot of time for image edititing than doing it manually.

Almost all graphic/Image and 3D/Render softwares are moving towards this trend of making more automation of the workflow and tools - making it easier and more user friendly for the users to do complicated stuff in seconds.

(With a decent fast & powerful computer which can make the heavy calculations quickly)

So that's what this is about - AUTOMATION - automate repetitive and tedious tasks and making the software tools more automated.

Which also mean that they can cut a steep learning curve, and can sell more software to more users/artists who then can get good results without being über PS professionals & engineers.

You often still need to be an artist or have that 'special eye' for what looks good to get good & perfect end-results though! - and some artists still need to tweak their stuff in different ways to get that special personal touch they are looking for.

You young students of today are very lucky! and you can buy all these new cool softwares at reduced & discount prices.

It's soo damn expensive, and I sometimes wish that I was a student again, so I could buy all these new cool softwares out there to play around with.

"A question for those who use PS ...

When tools such as these are use to manipulate an image do they leave something of a digital trace behind?"

PSer with 12 years experience here. Answer: yep. If you look at the tree that was removed, you can see digital artifacts were still picked up by the healing brush, making the affected area a tad lighter than the surroundings. Same with the shadow under the bench. The desert shot basically cloned and warped new fill content that can still be traced. But...still awesome job.

However, to someone who sees the "after" image for the first time and never sees the "before" image, it would be very difficult to pick up these differences. Amazing algorithm. I'll be picking it up fo sho.

In the end though, a true artist willing to put in the time can do a better job by hand than any algorithm.

well the things he did would only take a few extra minutes to do by hand. cool little tool, however it fails on the desert scene, same rock 3 times in a row.

some things will still need to be done by hand.

reply to post by Chevalerous


you know what I'd like to see? something that automatically enhances photographs for visibility; I could've sworn I heard there was an algorithm for that...zoom in and then enhance automatically, voila! no more blurfos

I think it should just be on the same level as those plate number enhancement software

AWSOME!!!

I wonder when this will be released??

It means that the hours of painstaking work can be replaced with other creative processes.

I think one use would be to go through all my old photos and delete my ex from all the awesome places we went lol )

Seriously though, this is simply outstanding!!

I can't wait to get my hands on this!!

Thanks for bring this to my attention and this thread a star and flag!!

All the best,

Korg.

Originally posted by D.E.M.
If this is being made available to the general populace, do you really think you can trust any images or video released by the government from here on out?

It's been available for some time. All that you see being done in Photoshop can already be done manually without the use of the algorithm. It's just now easier to manipulate a picture.

But I'm sure this is going to prompt a lot of amatuers to fake even more photos. However, it does look like you'll be able to tell if somethings been faked or not. Where do you think that content fill gets the "fill" from? Other parts of the image. So just look for repeating textures and you know something has been edited out/in/whatever.

On a lighter note: I use Photoshop daily and this content fill will make my work load lighter.

Originally posted by phi1618
well the things he did would only take a few extra minutes to do by hand. cool little tool, however it fails on the desert scene, same rock 3 times in a row.

some things will still need to be done by hand.

Yeah exactly!

Filling out these areas as he did gets a repetitive rock in the same place all over the filled out area for an example, but this could easily be solved with some kind of randomizer algorithm in the automation - I think?

Like what I now have with the EZDRUMMER software for an example - there's a randomizer button to get less static drums etc.

Hi everyone
Even tho we cannot see the "seam" with this technology, if you look closely at the october 2009 video from jazzguy, you can clearly spot where the cloud was taken from in the picture to replace the three. The same can be said about the last example of the same video.

I know it will be a nice toy for Joe Average, but for me, I rather be in control of the seams AND the replacing content so IT DOES NOT LOOK replaced... Harder to do, but there are harder jobs in this world... Anyway, only lazy graphic artists will truly use it on a grand scale...

Salut! Aresh

Originally posted by Chevalerous

Originally posted by phi1618
well the things he did would only take a few extra minutes to do by hand. cool little tool, however it fails on the desert scene, same rock 3 times in a row.

some things will still need to be done by hand.

Yeah exactly!

Filling out these areas as he did gets a repetitive rock in the same place all over the filled out area for an example, but this could easily be solved with some kind of randomizer algorithm in the automation - I think?

Like what I now have with the EZDRUMMER software for an example - there's a randomizer button to get less static drums etc.

I think where this software helps massively and I know I'm a self confessed shopper is where there is a fade you have to delete back to. It is nigh on imposable to do without making it obvious and it takes one hell of alot longer than 3 mins I can tell you, even if you are a shopninja.

btw I've never used EZdrummer (I have a home recording studio) but find the groove tools in cubase 5 awsome!! Though nothing will ever sound as good as a real kit and a real player, regardless of how good the software...

And to relate that to using photoshop... A true time capture in a good shot will always out do an image touched up by photoshop. I spend hours trawling through the hundreds of shots I take to pick out one or two because they are perfect, not because of imperfections but because of them.

So you sir get a star

All the best,

Korg.

Originally posted by reject
reply to post by Chevalerous

 

you know what I'd like to see? something that automatically enhances photographs for visibility; I could've sworn I heard there was an algorithm for that...zoom in and then enhance automatically, voila! no more blurfos

I think it should just be on the same level as those plate number enhancement software

Ha-ha! yeah!

Actually! this kind of software already exists!

The military have the nice stuff already! - they can zoom in on every pixel without almost any distorsions in real time - you will need a super computer to do the calculations though.

We others have to wait for the Intel 1028 core processor to get that stuff!

I

I have been computer industry for over 30 years and I can tell you this is pretty scary. Here is why...

the computer that this was demo'd on is slow compared to a government system that is at least a million times faster processing.
What you can do with this is totally add or subtract something from what the TV camera sees and what we see at home in a continuous movie format.

That means - you could see a moving alien walking on the sidewalk between people as the movie camera transmits it to the home TV while there would be nothing there in real life. Or vice a verse.

What this means to you:
- be very discerning on what your eyes see - it could be not real.

reply to post by DaRAGE


Yes it is good for some cases. But you will probably need the manual editing as well. I wanted to say that this isn't new. It was pretty good in the picture with the clouds but in the first picture it wasn't as good. You could cut and paste some parts near it and smooth the edges with an eraser at 20-35 % opacity and do a better job.
It saves time for sure I'm not arguing about that.

[edit on 25/3/10 by defiler]

[edit on 25/3/10 by defiler]