5 minutes with Photoshop CS5 Content Aware Fill

I’ve just downloaded the trial of Photoshop CS5 and like many photographers I’ve thrown one of my photographs at the new content aware fill and healing brush tool.  I purposely did not spend time learning how to use the tool as I wanted to see how user-friendly it really was and I must say I am pretty impressed.

So here is the original photo, complete with an ugly parking lot destroying the peaceful aesthetic quality of the photo. 

So with the lasso tool I selected the cars and the base of the tree and simple pressed delete. I was immediately presented with a new set of fill options.

And what do you know …

I took care of the little light post on the stairs with the new content aware healing brush. This is not a final edit, there is still a lot of work to do on the tree however it certainly demonstrates just how far you can come in five minutes.

Although I have a love-hate relationship with Adobe but I must say that the new tools available to photographers in CS5 are nothing short of revolutionary. If you haven’t downloaded the trial yet then what are you waiting for?

Aperture Tip: Selectively Brush Away Saturation

So here is a quick and dirty tip for Aperture users wondering how to selectively brush away saturation. Select the saturation quick brush. It will brush saturation in by default so clicking on the little cog at the top right of the adjustment brick will allow you to selectively desaturate parts of your image.

Review: Noise Ninja 64 bit Aperture 3 Plug-in

Noise, unless used for dramatic or artistic effect, is usually the bane of most photographers.  In-application noise reduction has typically been limited and photographers have had to resort to 3rd party plugins like NIK’s DFine and PictureCode’s Noise Ninja.  Adobe is making every effort to improve noise reduction in the latest Lightroom 3 beta 2 however specialised software that has been concentrating on this one area for many years will be a hard contender to beat.  I have a bunch of snaps that I love but which, due to the limitations of the point and shoot cameras they were taken on, suffer from low light noise problems.  In order to recover these photos I trialled the latest version of the popular noise reduction plugin from PictureCode. 

After installation of the Aperture Plugin, a new option appears in the ‘Edit with plug-in’ context menu.  Aperture users will want to fork out a little extra for this 64 bit plugin to avoid having to export to a referenced image for use in the standalone application or having to roundtrip to Photoshop.

The sliders are easy to understand and manipulate and there is instant feedback of your adjustments in the preview pane.


Below is a photograph of my son (zoomed in to 1:1) that I really love but the noise is horrific and this photo is almost unusable for inclusion in my year end photobook.

After a couple of seconds in Noise Ninja I’d rescued this photo and the results speak for themselves.

I happily forked out $79 for the Noise Ninja bundle that includes the 64 bit Aperture plugin (sheer convenience at not having to roundtrip to Photoshop), a standalone application and the Photoshop plug-in for the few occasions I really have to tame the pixels.

Aperture to DNG to Adobe Camera Raw Workflow

I’ve just made a really useful Automator workflow for fans of Aperture. The workflow allows me to select any number of .NEF raw files (either managed or as referenced masters) and with a single click perform the following actions:

• Generate XMP sidecar files with all Aperture metadata and export them with the .NEF to a working folder
• Combine the .XMP and the .NEF into a .DNG using the latest DNG converter from Adobe
• Remove the temporary .NEF and .XMP files leaving only the DNG files
• Open a finder dialog, allow me to select one or all of the DNG files
• Opens my selection for editing in Adobe Camera Raw

This is important to me as it allows me to use all the power and flexibility of Apertures photo management and retain the use of ALL the brilliant non-destructive editing tools of Lightroom (which are all available in the ACR interface). Further heavy pixel pushing from ACR straight to Photoshop is a further button click away.

There is a little basic setup required.

• Go to this site, download and install the DNG Automator action.
• If you don’t have it yet, go to Adobe and download their free DNG converter. Install it.
• Go to my Skydrive and download my workflow (or application if you prefer), unzip it and run it.

You should see something like this:

The workflow should open in Automator. Replace the areas in the image above which say Adobe Photoshop CS4 with the version you have (if you don’t have CS4).

You can now either run the workflow directly from Automator or (from Automator) click: File > Save as plugin. Select ‘Script menu’ under the plug-in for section and choose a name. The script is added to your scripts folder in your taskbar and you can access it really easily when you’re in Aperture.

Done! The best of Aperture goodness with the heavy lifting of ACR and Photoshop for when you want it.

Seeing Potential

I often find that when I put a camera in the hands of my eight year old son I am blown away by the results.  It’s not about great photography by any stretch of the imagination but rather about seeing the world in a fundamentally different way; a young mind is relativity unfettered by convention, he doesn’t know about the rule of thirds and phi is something you bake in the oven. Sitting flicking through his photographs I stumble across a few real gems taken of a subject I would never have thought to photograph or from a perspective that is completely original.

The lesson I take from this is that sometimes just the act of taking a photograph, even when the potential is not immediately apparent is worthwhile in and of itself.  Forcing myself to change my perspective to try and see the world around me as fresh and interesting – even when the muse is stale – to in some respects unlearn the conventions and rules frees me to be a better photographer and react to the light and the moment when it arrives.