Content-Aware Scale resizes an image without changing important details such as people, buildings, or animals. While normal scaling (transforming) affects all pixels uniformly when resizing an image, content-aware scaling mostly affects pixels in areas that don’t have important visual content. Content-Aware Scale lets you up-scale or down-scale images to improve a composition, fit a layout, or change the orientation. If you want to use some normal scaling when resizing your image, there is an option for specifying a ratio of content-aware scaling to normal scaling. You can use these techniques to transform a landscape image to portrait and a portrait to landscape.
EditSteps
EditScaling an Image Up
- Open Photoshop and your image (or).
- Make a duplicate of the background by pressing in Windows and in Mac. Content-Aware Scale does not work on a background image, so a copy has to be made.
- Make the canvas big by cropping it up. Content-Aware Scale will make the image large, so a large canvas is required.
- Press for the Crop Tool.
- Go to Edit → Content-Aware Scale. Click on Content-Aware Scale.
- The 4 corners of the image will change to points.
- Drag one of the corners "outside" as you click one of the points. You can also press , while dragging, on the keyboard to maintain the ratio of both the sides of the image.
- Press or the "Right sign" when done.
- Use this technique to transform any portrait image to a landscape image.
- To download this Lighthouse image click here.
EditScaling an Image Down
- Open Photoshop and an image (or).
- Make a duplicate of the background by pressing in Windows and in Mac. Content-Aware Scale does not work on a background image, so a copy has to be made.
- Go to Edit → Content-Aware Scale. Click on Content-Aware Scale.
- The 4 corners of the image will change to points.
- Drag one of the corners "inside" as you click one of the points. You can also press , while dragging, on the keyboard to maintain the ratio of both the sides of the image.
- For this image, pressing is not necessary.
- Press or the "Right sign" when done.
- Crop the image. After you have made it small, the background image can be seen, so you have to crop it.
- Use this technique to transform any landscape image to a portrait image.
- To download this Beach image click here.
EditTips
- You can also select the area using the selection tools and then use the Content-Aware Scale inside the selection to stretch it out.
- You can press , while dragging, on the keyboard to maintain the ratio of both the sides of the image.
- You can also (Content-Aware)scale the image vertically(upwards or downwards).
- Click on the Protect skin tone icon when there are persons in the image, located just beside the "Right sign".
- Add a blur and then add a Layer Mask where it looks bad.
EditWarnings
- Content-Aware Scale does not work limitlessly, but it does work very well. Just don't go too far with it, or it will will look bad.
EditThings You'll Need
- Adobe Photoshop
EditRelated wikiHows
Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Content%E2%80%90Aware-Scale-in-Photoshop