How to Stretch Backgrounds using Content-Aware Scale in Photoshop

Have you ever really needed to extend the background of your image (not the subject) to fit today's sizes, like, Facebook cover, YouTube channel art etc. , but not wanted to spend hours with the clone stamp tool? If so, today's episode is for you! Learn How to Stretch your images without any distortion using the Content-Aware Scale and utilizing some of its awesome Hidden Features. Also, learn the tricks to hack the tool and use it to your advantage. In this video, we are going to learn the Content-Aware Scale in-depth and discover some of its amazing features and loopholes.

▶ IMAGE DOWNLOADS:
1. Tower: pexels.com/photo/brown-concrete-tower-at-night-…
2. Woman Sitting on Pier: pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-gray-long-sleeve…
3. Woman Walking on Seashore: pexels.com/photo/photo-of-woman-walking-on-seas…

Preparation

We start out with a square image that we would like to extend. It is a great example because we want to stretch out the sky, but not the tower in the center. If you have a highly detailed photo that you want to stretch, the content aware scale tool will not be the best option. If it's simple open space, however, like a sky or the ground, it will most certainly help you out! You can do this both horizontally and vertically.

Start by extending the canvas behind your image. You can do this by using the crop tool, for this press C and just widening the background. Hold the edge and drag it to the left or right.

KEY: Hold Alt/Opt while doing this to extend out evenly from the center.
Duplicate the background layer by holding Cmd + J.

Regular Scale vs. Content Aware Scale

To test out how incorrect the photo will look with the normal transform tool, you can press Cmd + T and this will stretch every pixel of the photo, including details like tower. Yuck!! This ruins the whole image. This is where Content Aware Scale comes in!

Content Aware Scale

Go to Edit - Content Aware Scale. Now, you can drag the edges of the image outwards and the most viral information will stay intact (tower) while the more simple information (sky) will be extended to hit the new borders. It creates a much more natural look than the previous example!

Protect Your Important Information!

You might notice that when you used the Content Aware Scale tool, there were parts of your image that were warped or slanted a bit, just like any other automatic tools in Photoshop, it has its own limitations. To truly make sure the items you don't want to stretch stay protected, it will just take a few extra steps.

Make a selection of the object you would like to "protect." In this case, it is the tower.
Load this selection as a Channel. To do this go to the Channels tab, and create a new channel. Your objects should still be selected!
You will see a completely black screen with marching ants around your objects. Hold Shift + Delete and select Use - White. Now, your object will be white on a black background.
Go back to your regular layers tab. Go to Edit - Content Aware Scale, and select your Alpha 1 channel under the Protect drop down menu.
Scale the image just as you did before! The object you chose to "protect" should not move, and you will have a more successful final image.
As you can see in our example, the before and after images are only different in their cropped size. The goal is to have the end image look completely natural, and not give away the secret that you've stretched it out!

TIP: Sometimes you just can't scale as much as you'd like. A helpful hint is to scale it halfway, stop, press enter and then start over with content aware scale and scale it the rest of the way.

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