How to Give your image more space

Find a suitable image

Not all images are great for contentaware cropping. Lots of really fine detail, or faces, at the frame’s edge can cause problems. Landscapes like the above, with lots of sky, are likely to work better. If only it weren’t tilted…

Set up the Crop tool

Press C to select the Crop tool, and note the new options immediately above your image. The first thing to check is that the first pop-up menu, which lets you pick the aspect ratio of the image, is set to Original Ratio.

Use the straightener

Photoshop’s Straighten tool enables you to draw a line along the horizon and level the image to it automatically. Hold Cmd, then drag across the horizon of your image. When you let go, your image will level up.

Make the magic happen

With your image level, you’ll notice you now have grey and white checkerboard at the corners. Ordinarily you’d delete these, along with some of the image. Instead, make sure Content-Aware is checked, and press Return.

Get closer

For images you’re using online, this is all you have to do. For those you’ll print, it’s worth being more detail-oriented. Look at the fine details, and look for repeating patterns generated by the content-aware crop process.

Content-Aware Fill

Press Shift+F5, or choose Edit > Fill, and you’ll see the Content-Aware Fill dialog. Make sure the pop-up at the top of it reads “Content-Aware,” then press Return. You’ll then find that the pattern disappears.

Beyond boundaries

Content-aware cropping also enables you to zoom out as well as in. Here, we’d like our volcano to be a bit smaller in the frame, so we can run text around it. Press C, then drag the box beyond the original shot’s boundaries.

Outline the pattern

This repeating pattern is subtle, but will stand out in a big print. It’s easy to fix, though. Press L to select the Lasso tool, then draw loosely around the pattern you want to fix. An accurate outline, in this case, is unimportant.

Fill again

If you still have a repeating pattern, try repeating the Content-Aware Fill process. The result will change each time, so just stop when you achieve a less obvious result, then press Cmd+D to deselect the area you changed.

More space

Press Return to see the recomposed image. Thanks to the Content-Aware Fill, which has filled-in the extended canvas area very credibly, you can give your photo’s subject more space and add a convincing background.