How to Remove Objects with Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop

How to Remove Objects with Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop CC 2019

Photoshop CC 2019 brought a genuine update to Content-Aware Fill, giving it its own dedicated dialog with new fine-tuning options rather than just the old one-click fill. This tutorial compares the new Content-Aware Fill against the original version still hiding elsewhere in Photoshop, and against the Spot Healing Brush’s own built-in content-aware technology, across both an easy removal and a genuinely tricky one.

What’s New in Content-Aware Fill for Photoshop CC 2019

Content-Aware Fill automatically fills a selected area using information pulled from the rest of the photo, making it a fast way to remove unwanted objects. The CC 2019 update adds a new set of adjustable options, sampling area, scale, mirror, color adaptation, and rotation adaptation, along with a live preview showing exactly what the fill will look like before it’s committed. Interestingly, the original Content-Aware Fill tool, with none of these new options, is still available elsewhere in Photoshop, since Adobe updated one access point but left the other unchanged.

Remove a Simple Object Against a Clean Background

Tracing a rough selection around a helicopter against an open sky with the Lasso tool, then going to Edit > Content-Aware Fill, brings up the new dialog. The green overlay shows exactly which parts of the image the tool is sampling from, which by default covers nearly the entire photo; clicking Subtract and painting over the mountains tells the tool not to pull any information from that area, useful here since the goal is a clean sky fill rather than mountain texture.

Choosing a New Layer for Non-Destructive Output

Down at the bottom of the dialog, the Output To setting offers Current Layer, New Layer, or Duplicate Layer, and New Layer is generally the right choice since it keeps the fill fully non-destructive and separate from the original background. On a straightforward, high-contrast removal like a dark helicopter against a light, mostly featureless sky, the result comes out clean and convincing right away.

Fine-Tune Sampling, Color and Rotation Adaptation

Color Adaptation offers None, Default, High, and Very High settings, useful for blending sampled color more smoothly into the surrounding area, though in practice it’s genuinely a guess-and-check setting: what seems like the obviously correct choice sometimes produces a worse result than expected, so leaving it at Default or None much of the time and testing from there tends to work better than assuming higher always means better.

Scale and Mirror Options for Continuous Edges

Rotation Adaptation helps when removing part of an object that curves or rotates around a circular pattern, like the edge design on a plate. Scale allows a sampled area to shrink or grow to better fit the space it’s filling, and Mirror flips sampled content to keep edges lining up symmetrically; both exist specifically to help an edge continue naturally into the filled area rather than trailing off into an obvious blur.

Compare the New Tool to the Original Content-Aware Fill

The original Content-Aware Fill is still reachable through Edit > Fill, choosing Content-Aware from the Contents dropdown, with just a single Color Adaptation checkbox and none of the new scale, rotation, or sampling controls.

Old vs New: Nearly Identical Results on Easy Images

On the simple helicopter-against-sky removal, the older tool produces essentially the same clean result as the new dialog, since a straightforward fill against a mostly uniform background doesn’t really benefit from the newer tool’s extra fine-tuning options in the first place.

Test the New Tool on a More Complicated Image

A more demanding test comes from removing a group of birds sitting on a railing, since the fill now has to correctly reconstruct a continuous straight edge rather than just extending an open sky. The new Content-Aware Fill’s first attempt gets close, but leaves a few small jagged lines where the railing doesn’t quite connect the way it should.

Guess-and-Check Your Way Through the Adaptation Settings

Pushing Color Adaptation up to Very High actually makes the railing fill look worse rather than better, so it goes back down to None. Rotation Adaptation, tried at Low, helps the railing line connect a bit more naturally, while Medium doesn’t help nearly as much, again defying the assumption that a stronger setting automatically produces a better result. Turning on Scale doesn’t manage to properly shrink the oversized railing section to fit, and Mirror doesn’t improve the result either in this particular case, so both stay off for the final pass. The end result, output to a new layer with just a touch of rotation adaptation dialed in, connects the railing convincingly enough that it would pass as a believable automatic fix, even if it’s not quite the precision a professional retoucher would deliver by hand. Running the same bird removal through the original Content-Aware Fill produces a noticeably more jagged result, since the older tool has no rotation option available to help the railing’s angle connect properly, making the new tool’s extra controls genuinely useful on a trickier image even though they didn’t matter on the easy one.

Try the Spot Healing Brush’s Built-In Content-Aware Technology

The Spot Healing Brush, with its Content Aware option turned on and Sample All Layers checked so the result lands on a fresh new layer, uses the exact same underlying content-aware technology as the two fill tools, but skips the selection-and-dialog process entirely: simply painting directly over an unwanted object removes it immediately.

Painting Away Multiple Objects in One Pass

Painting over each bird one at a time removes most of them cleanly and quickly, occasionally leaving a small residual point that needs a second quick pass to fully clear. Removing an entire post the same way also works convincingly. Overall the Spot Healing Brush handles this same tricky railing image faster and with noticeably less fuss than either version of the Content-Aware Fill dialog, even though all three tools are drawing on the same core Adobe technology under the hood.

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Why the Spot Healing Brush Is Still the Favorite

Across three tools built on the same underlying content-aware engine, the Spot Healing Brush wins out for one simple reason: it removes the entire selection-and-dialog process and reduces the whole operation down to just painting over what needs to disappear. The new Content-Aware Fill dialog’s extra options, sampling, scale, mirror, color and rotation adaptation, genuinely help on trickier images with edges that need to reconnect naturally, but they also add a layer of guess-and-check tuning that a straightforward painted removal simply doesn’t require in the first place.

Final Thoughts

Photoshop CC 2019’s updated Content-Aware Fill dialog adds real, useful fine-tuning power for difficult removals, particularly ones involving edges, patterns, or curves that need to reconnect convincingly, even if getting the best result still means some trial and error with the color, rotation, scale, and mirror settings. For everyday object removal though, especially anything simple enough not to need that extra control, the content-aware Spot Healing Brush remains the fastest and most convenient of the three tools covered here.

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