Adobe demos Photoshop CS4's content-aware scaling

In a QuickTime screencast, Adobe's Russell Brown demonstrates content-aware scaling, a feature of Photoshop CS4, due to be released this month.

A lower-resolution YouTube demo from Lynda.com is available here, if you don't want to download a huge QuickTime movie. The content is different, but you'll get the idea.

Adobe licensed an algorithm that senses "dead" areas in photos, and resizes the image to avoid squashing or stretching every object.

In the video, Brown demonstrates resizing an image of four golfers, interactively removing space between and around the golfers, but leaving the golfers' proportions correct. He also demonstrates resizing a Volkswagen bus, making it a more "economical" size, but automatically keeping the wheels round.

For those looking for a compelling reason to upgrade to Photoshop CS4, this might be it. If not, what is? Let us know by leaving a comment.

[Via Swissmiss and Michael Sippey.]

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Source: http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/ContentAwareScale_SM.mov

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In a QuickTime screencast, Adobe's Russell Brown demonstrates content-aware scaling, a feature of Photoshop CS4, due to be released this...

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Iscariote

Doesn't CS4 contain GPU acceleration? That's probably pretty useful for people who use Photoshop.

October 10 2008 at 3:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

.Trashes

That... is... awesome!

October 10 2008 at 12:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Josue

Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab were the ones who developed for the first time this kind of software algorithm. For one deeper explanation on how this works visit http://rsencion.blogspot.com/2007/08/image-resizing.html

October 10 2008 at 10:30 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jash Sayani

I am happy with CS 3 !! Cant keep upgrading for every update....

October 10 2008 at 7:46 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

razzi

Rsizr does the same (and for free). See the article (in Dutch) here: http://www.razziphoto.com/2008/09/23/gratis-content-aware-scaling/

October 10 2008 at 1:46 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Seth Amott

Pretty damn cool feature, something I would have been able to use in the past a few times. However, I don't think its worth the upgrade cost.

October 09 2008 at 11:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Roger

What is wrong with that guy?

So annoying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHUT UP!!!

October 09 2008 at 8:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Roger's comment

Brendan

Agreed. I couldn't make myself sit thru the entire thing, because it was so obnoxious. I felt he was treating me like a kindergartener, at which point I skimmed thru the video.

October 10 2008 at 11:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Grant H

For someone that has used this first hand on the pre-release team, I have to warn you not to expect miracles, this is the first implementation of the feature and by no means will it be left as is, there is much room for improvement.

October 09 2008 at 7:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I think I'll skip this version. The new features don't scream to me. But then again, Smart Objects seemed useless until I tried them out a few times.

October 09 2008 at 7:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to BT's comment

massimo.berta

Smart objects are totally usefull! Especially when you design GUIs with one recursive object... like buttons lets say...

October 10 2008 at 1:29 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

probably based on the "seam carving" work done by Shavi Avidan & Ariel Shamir, which was presented at Siggraph last year

see:
http://www.seamcarving.com/

also an interactive demo here:
http://swieskowski.net/carve/

oh, I didn't notice the post at the top about GIMP - indeed it's the same algorithm there as I mention here...

interestingly, the same guys have done some work on applying seam carving to video(!)
http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~rubinst1/pub/vidret/