Content aware scaling in Photoline

[Herbert123]

Today I had need of scaling down an image, while maintaining the scale of certain elements. I almost never have to do this in my work, and I thought Photoline did not feature such an option (which is called "Content Aware Scaling" in Photoshop. I sometimes still fire up CS6 for

However, it does! I always wondered about that "Liquid" interpolation method in the scaling dialog. Well, it is actually "Content Aware" scaling! Just select the parts you wish to protect, and scale down. Obviously not usable on all images, but still nice to see that this option is actually available.

I have done this before with Photoshop, because I did not think Photoline offered the same functionality. Perhaps this scaling option should be renamed "Content Aware". "Liquid" does not sound quite right, in my opinion.

[photoken]

Holy crap! That is an awesome discovery, man!

For me, too, I've always thought that the capability in other editors to "squeeze out" unwanted image areas was unavailable in PL.

A quick test shows the potential:
From this (showing that all but the yellow house is protected):

scale original.jpg

to this:

scale result.jpg

If I had kept the "proportional" setting enabled, then the remaining houses would not have been distorted, but the image itself would have become much smaller.

Great find, and thanks for pointing it out!

[Herbert123]

I agree - I never connected "liquid" scaling to "content aware" scaling. And I too was convinced no such option is available in Photoline - until I happened to be browsing the manual today (because of that other documentation thread), and I decided to click on the scaling button with the help function. I then read up on the "liquid" thing - and only then did I make that connection.

Well, a good find - I will not use it that often, but still quite handy to have under circumstances and with the right images.

[photoken]

Well, a good find - I will not use it that often, but still quite handy to have under circumstances and with the right images.

Yes. But, of course, I'm never satisfied.

As I remember how the function works in PSP, the protected areas don't get affected until the "squeezing" gets extreme. For example, in my sample test image the remaining houses should have been distorted much less. Perhaps the algorithm used for scaling can be changed to keep the protected areas unchanged for a longer amount of time. But then, maybe my test image pushed the boundaries too far -- the width was scaled down by 50%....

Also, it would be even better if we could enable that "Liquid" option when using the Layer Tool to scale an image. That way we could watch in real time how much scaling to do before the distortions become too much.

[Herbert123]

Similar distortions occur in Photoshop - that is just the nature of the algorithm, I guess.

Calculation in Photoshop is much faster, though, and the tool provides real-time visual feedback to the user.

[photoken]

I did a lot of experimenting with this last evening, and it's not quite as useful as I had hoped.

The effectiveness varies a lot, depending on the image. Larger images (approx. 5,200px x 3,800px) don't work too well, and the processing time is minutes. If I reduce the image (approx. 1,200px x 800px), it works somewhat better, but not by much.

80% seems to be the "magic number" as far as distortion is concerned. If the reduction is 80-99%, the distortion isn't too bad, but 79% and lower shows very obvious distortion.

Bits of the "removed" area always remain, so reducing more doesn't help. Other tools such as the Remove Brush or Copy Brush will always need to be used to clean things up.

The effectiveness is very dependent on the image content, and there's no way to predict beforehand how well it will work. PSP has a "Smart Carver" tool that removes areas, and I tested PL on a screencap of one of their small example images. PL did an excellent job on that, but on various other larger images found on the Web the results were less than spectacular, to say the least.

The bottom line is that you'll just need to take a chance and see if it will do something useful on your image.

For this feature to be really useful, it would need to have its own dedicated tool. Something with one brush in the settings to "Always Protect" an area, and another brush to "Completely Remove" other areas. Also, I think the most common scenario would involve reducing the width, and in that case I really don't care about specifying the exact percentage. I just want the thing to reduce the width as much as necessary to remove the areas I don't want.