After Effects Just Got Content-Aware Fill for Auto-Erasing Things in Video

Apr 03, 2019

One of Photoshop’s most impressive features was just added to After Effects. Content-Aware Fill is now available for automatically removing unwanted elements from video.

Adobe first teased Content-Aware Fill for video back at the Adobe MAX 2017 conference in October 2017. Utilizing the power of Adobe Sensei AI technology, After Effects’ new Content-Aware Fill lets you cleanly erase anything from footage without having to do frame-by-frame edits.

“Editors can now remove people, objects, shadows and much more while keeping the video content you want intact, helping you to streamline your editing process,” Adobe says.

Suppose you have a castle shot that you’d like to use for a fantasy movie, but it contains modern elements and tourists.

Simply cut out the elements you wish to remove using masking, keying, or the Roto Brush…

…then click the Generate Fill Layer button.

Content-Aware Fill will then analyze the content and motion of your frames, choosing the best pixels throughout the composition to fill in the blank areas.

You can also paint individual reference frames to guide After Effects in the results you’d like. After some analyzing and crunching, voila! A clean shot without those elements.