Photoshop unveils Content-Aware Cropping

Adobe is introducing a new feature for Photoshop that designers using this software should find useful. That’s because the new feature addresses an old problem that many users have come across, but could never before deal with this easily.

According to a recent blog post by Adobe, they will be introducing the new Content-Aware Crop tool. One of the most common types of feedback for the company has been the request to apply its Content-Aware technology to cropping; users will be pleased to know that they won’t have to wait too much longer.

The Content-Aware Crop tool is smart technology. It takes into consideration all of the pixels around your image’s edges and fills in the blank space automatically with content, as you either rotate or expand said image.

Even though this tool is still being fine-tuned, Adobe has unveiled all the different ways that designers will be able to use it:

• you can move the horizon either by adding more ground or sky;
• you can fill in your corners as you rotate an image, so you’re able to keep all of the pixels that you have;
• you can alter the aspect ratio by adding content around your image’s edges.

Since this new tool is still in the works, there are likely to be additional applications that designers will discover as they play around. For example you can also utilize the new cropping feature to expand your canvas. This can be very useful if you take a picture with the subject too tightly framed.

This is another case of the company listening to its vast audience of designers and creatives and implementing feedback to improve the use of the software.

Until now, designers had to contend with simply cropping the image in order to cut out the borders entirely. Or they could try and make do with Photoshop’s Content-Aware tool, which didn’t provide anywhere near the convenience and efficiency of the new cropping feature.

Cropping and aligning images are fairly routine tasks in Photoshop, so it makes sense to finally have a feature that addresses this.

Marc Schenker

Marc’s a copywriter who covers design news for Web Designer Depot. Find out more about him at thegloriouscompanyltd.com.