Julieanne Kost's Blog

When removing power lines or content that falls along a straight line, clicking on the starting point and then Shift -clicking on the end of the line will instruct Photoshop to draw a straight line between the two clicks. (This works with many of the painting tools – including the Spot Healing Brush with the Content Aware option). If the content to be removed is not straight, try using the Pen tool to trace the content, then use the flyout menu on the Paths panel to Stroke the Path with the Spot Healing Brush to remove the unwanted areas.

Content Aware Fill will only sample from visible areas. Therefore, if the Content Aware Fill command pulls information from unwanted areas, undo the edit and select the areas that you don’t want it to sample from. Add a layer mast to temporarily hide these areas. Then, reselect the area to be filled with the Content-Aware Fill option. Once the unwanted areas have been filled, discard the mask (without applying).

If running Content Aware Fill doesn’t provide the results you were looking for the first time around, try running it again. Photoshop will shift the algorithm slightly, and pull from different areas of the image.

With the Spot Healing Brush selected, click the Content-Aware radio button in the Option bar to enable the technology.

If the targeted layer is the Background, and there is an active selection, tapping the Delete (Mac) / Backspace (Win) will display the Fill dialog where you can quickly access Content > Use > Content-Aware. If the targeted layer is NOT the Background, use Shift + Delete (Mac) / Backspace (Win) to display the Fill dialog.