The Photoshop Productivity Series: Automating Photoshop

Content-Aware Move Tool

Perhaps this tool, introduced in Photoshop CS6, should be called the Often Jaw-Droppingly Amazing tool. It is definitely a perfect example of our ongoing “compared to the alternative” concept. This tool moves a selected area and attempts to cover up the original position—automatically. Here’s our couple again, but this time we want to move them to a different position on the photo. In the past, that would have meant moving the couple (fairly easy) and then covering up their original position (potentially very time-consuming).

The Content-Aware Move tool does it all for you, often giving results that are pretty darn amazing. And it works with layers so you can continue to tweak the pixels. To get started, in the Options ...