One of the new features to Photoshop CS4 is Content Aware Scaling. This new feature allows a user to take an image and resize it without losing the key parts of a photo. It helps protect skin tone areas and you can also create an alpha channel so that certain areas are protected before the resizing. You really need to see this feature in action to appreciate it.
This tutorial will teach you what Content Aware Scaling is, how it works and how it can help you expand what you can achieve using Photoshop.
For more great Photoshop tutorials check out the MCP Actions Blog. And for shortcuts to better photographs using Photoshop actions, check out the MCP Actions Shop.
Art
18 Sep 2009I agree that this is an amazing feature, and your example of protecting during shrinking was a real plus! I’d missed that capability.
One word of caution: the last three times I’ve used content aware scaling to stretch a layer’s contents in a complex image, Photoshop (cs4/64bit) has CRASHED, taking my unsaved work with it. (You’d think I’d learn to Ctrl-S / save before I use this feature, wouldn’t you!?)
I can’t reproduce the crash, but it seems to be a combination of multiple stretches (both up and down, for instance) plus stretching one part of a larger image (it was one layer of seven large full-frame layers last night.)