The new AI powered Generative Fill has quickly become my most used tool in Adobe Photoshop.
One of my most common uses is to quickly swap out the background of my car photos.
Take this one for example, it's a quick iPhone photo of my truck after a recent flurry of
snow, but with a quick AI background swap it's suddenly teleported from a boring car
park in the north of England to a picturesque lake with snow capped mountains.
So let me show you how it's done...
Firstly the RAW image is adjusted to correct the overall brightness and colouring.
I'll not run through the every settings but here's an overview of each adjustment in the
Camera RAW window.
As you can see, I've mostly brought up the shadows and adjusted the overall colour cast
The quickest and easiest way to make a selection in Photoshop is the use the Select Subject
button to allow Photoshop to automatically detect the edges
It does a good job, but some areas might need cleaning up.
Here it has missed a portion of the front wheel and bumper.
You can add to the selection by holding Shift and trace the areas with the Lasso tool.
If you need to make more accurate selections the Pen tool allows you to easily follow curves
with precision.
Create a closed path, then right click and choose Make Selection, Choose Add to Selection.
Photoshop has missed out this roof rail, but I'm actually going to leave it deselected
too just to avoid having to cut out the holes.
Anywhere Photoshop has added too much of the background, you can hold the ALT key to Subtract
from Selection, or choose that option when converting a path to a selection,
The entire foreground area of this image is perfectly fine, so hold Shift and draw around
it to add it to the selection.
Here I'm tracing right up to the kerb.
anything else will be replaced with a new background.
Go to Edit > Copy to take a snapshot of this selection.
We'll make use of it in a moment,
We want to replace the background of the image, so invert the selection using the Select > Inverse
menu or the handy Invert Selection icon in the Contextual Toolbar.
Then we can use the Generative Fill prompt to insert some new scenery.
What about Snow Capped Mountains with Lake.
These results are all pretty nice, but let's regenerate some more just to compare them
all.
This one is probably my favourite.
The problem is, even though we made a selection of the subject, sometimes the AI does weird
things with the edges, In this case it's not too bad, but you can see the blurriness and
unwanted artifacts here and there.
A quick solution to fix this is to simply remove the entire subject from the scene.
Use the shortcut CMD+ALT+Shift+E (or CTRL+ALT+Shift+E on Windows) to create a merged copy on a new
layer.
Draw a rough selection around the subject and use the Generative Fill tool with no prompt.
Sometimes it will fill the area with trees, bushes or other objects from the scene, but
you can usually find a clean variation after a few generations.
This everyday use of Generative Fill to remove objects from a scene still blows my mind after
years of using the Clong Stamp tool and even Content Aware Fill.
Remember that selection we saved to the clipboard earlier?
Go to Object > Paste Special > Paste in Place to put the subject back into the scene, this
time with nice crisp edges
If there are any faint outlines, you can clean up the selection using the Layer > Matting
> Defringe menu.
At this point you might be wondering why we haven't just pasted in any old stock image
into the background instead.
But generating a new background ising AI allows Photoshop to automatically configure the colour
grading, perspective and lighting to match perfectly, which would all require extra steps
to match a totally separate stock image.
You can see a little area here where that clipping we've pasted in creates a hard line
against the AI background, but than can be cleaned up using a soft brush to fade out
the generative fill layer using the Layer Mask.
Depending on the size of your image, the AI background can sometimes look noticeably low-resolution.
One way to disguise this is to add some faux lens blur and depth of field.
Merge the latest generative fill layer with the merged copy below it using the CMD+E shortcut
Then Go to Filter > Blur Gallery and choose Tilt Shift.
Move the interface widget to align with the subjects and points within the scene.
The solid centre lines depict what will be in focus, which then fade out towards the
dashed lines.
Set the blur amount to suit.
A low value will help to replicate a narrow aperture to just add a subtle amount of blurring
and take the edge off the low resolution artifacts.
One last merged copy and Camera Raw Filter can add some finishing touches.
Tweak the brightness, colour and contrast and add a subtle Vignette to help tie the
background scene with the main subject.
By the way, if you fancy see my build process of this truck, I've been uploading videos
over on my little Chris Spooner Motoring channel sharing the various mods and upgrades I've
done.
What was a boring iPhone photo in a car park is now a wonderful wallpaper worthy image,
all thanks to a quick background swap using AI.
The new Generative Fill process made is so easy compared to downloading and compositing
a stock landscape image manually.