Back to Basics: How to Use Photoshop’s Cool Content Aware Scale Tool

Photoshop’s Content Aware Scale tool doesn’t get much headline time thanks to other popular features like Content Aware Move and, of course, the vilified Liquify tool, but it can come in extremely handy in a few situations.

A great example is demonstrated in the Photoshop Playbook video above, where PS Principal Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes shows you how to turn a simple square photo (you can guess where he got it from) into a landscape and portrait shot without cropping. He also shows you how to intelligently protect pieces of the photo so they don’t get warped.

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Obviously, you would want to use this technique sparingly, but it’s worth tucking away in the back of your head for future reference.


P.S. If you want to find out how Content Aware Scale actually works behind the scenes, check out this fascinating video we posted back in 2010 that explains the tech behind the magic.

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