Photoshop content-aware move & extend tool — sneak peek

We have seen some of it, and have heard about 'Content Aware Move' but the trick with the beach binoculars is new, and quite good with so little infor to draw on. The roof extend trick was also new, and that was impressive. What we need to do it give each Sneak Peek a WOW factor score, and plot those scores against a likely release date - say first week in May. Then we'll be able to extrapolate where future Sneak Peeks might fall on our graph.

The curve started out disappointingly shallow, but the trend is definitely going in the right direction.

Very nice new feature!  By the way, thanks for the great summary of tips to get the most out of content-aware-fill. It is very helpful!  http://prodesigntools.com/photoshop-cs5-content-aware-fill-before-after-essential-tips.htm l

I can see how that can save some time.

I can envision a spin-off feature that uses a lot of the same facilities this and Content Aware Fill do:  DOF Reduction.

Select/mask a subject, then blur the background believably, all in one shot.

It's quite doable now with a careful selection, edge refinement, new layer with mask, and content aware fill on the background so the subject doesn't participate in the blur.  Since people SO often want to "punch out" subjects and isolate them from the background, and especially since less expensive equipment usually has greater DOF, automating this would be a help.

-Noel

Alien Skin has a Bokeh plugin that does that. I haven't tried it yet, but I will (but it's a bit like cheating, isn't it...pretending to own a 400mm f/2.8)

http://www.alienskin.com/bokeh/

The trouble is that you can't just blur, that only looks like a sheet of frosted glass behind the subject. There is some very intricate stuff going on with the highlights that I've never quite managed to figure out. It has to do with the so-called "circle of confusion", but there endeth my understanding of it.

Yes.  Lens Blur gives better results.  Ideally, Photoshop would employ its new deconvolution tool on the reconstructed background to sharpen whatever blur was already there, then apply a Lens Blur to it, which makes COCs (disks) out of point light sources.

-Noel