​​Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How-To, and today I'm going to give you three ways to extend
your background in Adobe Photoshop. And really, the best way of doing this is with the brand new
Generative Fill. But that way isn't available for commercial use right now, and it also kind
of gives a low-resolution version. So, I'm going to show you that way last, and if you want to just
jump to that, you can go to this timestamp right here. All right, let's get started.
The first thing I'm going to show you is Content-Aware Scale. And with this tool,
you can just stretch a photo, and the idea is that Photoshop will be able to tell what it
can stretch and what it can't. So, it'll try to figure out what the subject is. Hopefully,
when we do this, she won't be stretched, but the background will. I'll hit "C" on my keyboard to
get to my Crop Tool right over here, and I'm just going to go ahead and hit "Clear" right
up here. And we'll want to be on Width, Height, and Resolution right here. I'm going to zoom out
a little bit with Command - or Control -, and I'm going to extend the picture to make it a little
wider. Then I'll hit Return or Enter to accept the changes. I'll go to Edit > Content-Aware Scale.
And once I'm in this screen, I need to make sure this little link up here is unchecked. This is the
Maintain Aspect Ratio button. It'll actually scale and make everything bigger in the background,
and I really only want to stretch it this way. So, make sure that's unchecked. I'll get on the
handle and just pull this over. Now you can see what it did. It kept this part of the image not
so stretched, but it's still a little stretched if you can see her arm. And then this part of the
image got really stretched. So, I'm going to undo and redo so you can see the difference.
So, that works pretty good, but I really don't want her to stretch as much as she did. So, we can
use a channel to protect her a little more. Now, Photoshop tries to figure out what the subject is,
but we're going to just tell it what the subject is. So, I undid back to the point where I have not
done any kind of content aware scaling yet. I'm going to come up here and get on my Lasso Tool,
and then I'll just quickly draw around her. This does not have to be perfect, but you'll
want to include everything that you don't want to be stretched very much. It's not perfect, by
the way. Now we'll come over here to Channels. If you're not seeing the windows over here, you can
come up here and find them under Window, and this one would be right here, Window > Channels. I'll
come down to the bottom of the panel and choose Create a Mask, which is this button right here.
And that'll give us this Alpha One Channel, and you can see whatever you have selected is white in
this little Alpha Channel, and the rest is black. Let's hit Command + D or Ctrl + D to deselect,
and then I'm going to go ahead and make sure that RGB is clicked here on Channels. I'll go to Edit >
Content-Aware Scale. Next to Protect, we're going to want to choose that Alpha 1 that we created
down here in Channels. And then we'll do the same thing. We'll just grab a handle and pull it over.
And you probably noticed that she's still stretched a little bit,
but not nearly as bad as the first photo. So one thing you can do if you still don't like
the amount of stretch is to pull this back in until you're happy with the amount. Maybe right
about here. And then go through that process again of using your Lasso Tool to select her
and then go to Channels, create a new mask. And then after deselecting, you'll want to go ahead
and go to Edit > Content-Aware Scale like we did before. And this time, we'll choose that
Alpha 2 under Protect. And now when we pull it all the way out there, she does not distort at
all. Content-Aware Scale works really well if you don't have very far to stretch the photo, but you
can keep making more Alpha Channels. Just keep in mind that it is going to be noticeable that
you're stretching the design. You can see right here, this looks pretty stretched. I'm going to
go ahead and close this photo. And this time I'll open a different Pexels photo. By the way, I got
all these images from pexels.com. The second way is to Select and Stretch method. And this is kind
of the old-school way. This is best if you don't have very far to stretch and you can't really tell
it the subject. The process is very similar. So I'll hit "C" to get to my Crop Tool. I'm going
to zoom out a little bit, and then I'll get right on this handle. I'll hold Option or Alt and drag,
and that way we can resize from the center. I'll hit Enter to commit the changes. And now I'm
going to hit "M" to get my Rectangle Marquee Tool. Really, with this style of stretching,
you can only use the Rectangle Marquee because other ways just don't work very well. And you'll
want to select only the stretchable parts. So if you don't want your subject to stretch,
you don't want to include it in your selection. Okay, so I've got this part selected. I'll hit
Command + J or Control + J to put that piece on a new layer. And then I'll hit Command + T so
that I can grab a handle and just stretch it over like this. And then hit Enter or Return to commit
the changes. Now I'm going to do the same thing over here. And by the way, if you only have a
tiny piece of stretchable image, that is going to be problematic. It'll look really stretchy if you
have to stretch any more than maybe a half inch. Hopefully, that's not the case though. I've got
my Marquee selection, and I'll just draw a box around the stretchable part of the image. Now,
if you don't want to put this on a new layer, you can just hit Command + T or Control + T and
just stretch it over like that. And it'll actually put it on the same layer. Now, I think this looks
pretty good. I don't think it's very easy to tell that it's been stretched, and that's the goal.
Once you've stretched things too far, it starts looking weird. Now you're going to come across
images that are just not stretchable, and in that case, your best bet is Generative Fill. And this
is available on the new version of Adobe Photoshop Beta. And if you don't have Photoshop Beta,
I actually have another video, and that'll be right up in the corner of your screen that shows
how to find that and install it. The icon looks a little different. It's white and blue instead
of blue and dark blue. So I'm going to get on the Photoshop Beta, and I'm going to open this image,
which really isn't stretchable because of this swing set. So I'm going to zoom out a little
bit and show you this Generative Artificial Intelligence Fill that will kind of take stock
of what's in the photograph and then fill it in with some stuff that it thinks will work.
The process is similar. So I'm going to hit "C" to get to my Crop Tool. Make sure "Clear" is checked,
and then I'm just going to pull this over like this. Maybe we'll make it even wider. I'll hit
Return or Enter to commit the changes. And then I'll hit "M" to get on my Rectangle Marquee.
I'm going to draw a box around the white, but I'm also going to include some of the image,
just a little bit, so Photoshop knows what to do. And then we'll get this bar that pops up. And if
you're not seeing the little bar, that's under Window > Contextual Taskbar right here. Normally,
when you're using Generative Fill, you would need to add a prompt in here. But if you're just trying
to extend the background, you don't need a prompt at all. So I'm going to click Generative Fill.
And then instead of entering a prompt, I'll click Generate again.
Okay, let me look closely at this. Okay, so this is what it added with Artificial Intelligence. It
just continued our Mountain scene. It added some houses back here, houses or something, anyway.
But it does have some problems. We have a chain right up here that's not connecting to anything,
and maybe another chain here. I'm not sure what that is. But the nice thing about Generative Fill
is it gives you three different options. You can toggle through these with these Arrow buttons.
Okay, this one is really nice. It looks realistic. It's added trees here instead of mountains.
And then that one is also very good.
The one I wouldn't choose is this one because it has a lot of things that don't seem quite
right in it. So that is something you'll run into. Sometimes it does a good job, sometimes
it doesn't. But it is a really nice feature, and it'll be great when it's available for commercial
use at high resolution. Alright, if you like this video and you want to see more videos like this,
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time a new video comes out. Alright, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!