Amazing tool! I can imagine the big amount of manual work needed to to do the same without this enhancement. Is this part of CS5?

So, you've never seen the Resynthesizer plugin (~2005) for Gimp then?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjCbwENf5sg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liE_sYVGFYU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLtYPmRMYRE

or the similar liquid rescale plugin (~2008)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-5iVNDVmAk

Thanks K, I never knew of this plugin. I've installed the Resynthesizer plugin together with the "Smart Remove Selection" filter, and it works really nicely with Gimp 2.6.

<<I've installed the Resynthesizer plugin together with the "Smart Remove Selection" filter, and it works really nicely with Gimp 2.6.>>

So this works with GIMP?

> So this works with GIMP?

Yes, the videos posted by "K" above use Gimp. It's available now, it's free, and it works in real life just like in the demos.

Here's one I just did, to try it out:
http://i44.tinypic.com/a2t1zd.jpg

After you have installed Gimp, you need to add the Resynthesizer plugin. I'm running Fedora Linux, so this was available by clicking "Add/Remove Software" and typing "resyn" in the search box.

You also need to install the script for the command, which you can download from here:
http://registry.gimp.net/files/smart-remove.scm

Drop that script in your Gimp Scripts folder (if you're not sure where that is, select "Edit | Preferences | Folders" from Gimp), and voila you can now do this cool stuff.

:O WOW! When I first saw the video I was thinking maybe that was a buying point for Photoshop, then you come along and tell me GIMP's been able to do it for 5 years!

Considering it's free it does a very good job! The picture I tried would need a little bit of editing after, but I'm still impressed!

http://sites.google.com/site/mrrix32/Home/blogoscoped/start2.jpg
http://sites.google.com/site/mrrix32/Home/blogoscoped/end2.png

[edit: fixed 2nd URL]

i think GIMP did it first deserves an edit

I asked someone about the GIMP filter and was told that the GIMP results "are almost uniformly bad... You can always tell that something used to be there." But I didn't test this myself... Roger's example looks good... and we need to keep in mind even the Photoshop filter was only shown in a (perhaps skewed) "demo sequence"...

Hmm....

quick search on reddit got me this: http://o3.tumblr.com/post/470608946/photoshops-caf-content-aware-fill-unbelievable

For those who haven't followed DPic's link, it runs the GIMP filter on the same samples used in the Photoshop demo, with similar results.

I should mention that the example I posted was the very first thing I tried. I'm not a particularly experienced GIMP user, and even basic GIMP operations often take me a while to master. But this one worked first time.

I also think Mrrix32's example is very impressive. Take a look at the detail that has been created for the stone wall behind the person, and the excellent filling at the base of the wall. This would be very difficult to achieve manually.

For sure, the top of the stone wall isn't level, but with the vertical railings to complicate things this must be about as good as an automatic algorithm could possibly be.

For those who don't know GIMP, it's a highly capable image editor. It doesn't yet replace Photoshop for high-end print production (where you need things like good CMYK handling and 16 rather than 8 bits per color per pixel) but for preparing web graphics it is extremely powerful.

GIMP is free and open source. The downside is that the interface is a bit different from the usual image editor, and takes a while to learn.

GIMP is available for Linux, Mac and Windows:
http://www.gimp.org/

I have tried various (actually lots and lots) of panorama's with the resynthesizer plugin, and even once you figure out how to use the plugin, it will take lots of steps to fill a panorama's borders and not once was it as good as photoshops. (And DPic's linked page was OR a joke OR took hours to make (in which case the author would have described the process in more detail probably))

   On the other hand, it has to be noted that the plugin is 5 years old and naturally photoshop was able to invest a lot more work on it than a single phd project, I just hope that this will inspire someone to continue working on the plugin.

David, maybe you have a setting wrong somewhere. I was able to duplicate the results on DPic's linked page in a couple of minutes.

For the panorama it helps to grow the canvas by a few pixels so that you can select all the way around with one click of the fuzzy select tool. Then grow the selection by, say, 5 pixels and use the tool. To my eyes it looks as good as the Photoshop demo.

But it's algorithmic, so it's always going to work better on textures than on shapes. Same for Photoshop. Maybe your expectations are beyond what this class of tool can achieve.

The Akvis Retoucher plugin seems to work in a similar way for Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. The examples show removal of objects such as litter bins and photo date stamps, and the extension (by synthesis) of an image beyond its borders.

The plugin is $27 but there's a free 10-day trial:
http://akvis.com/en/retoucher/index.php

Paint Shop Pro x3 or x2, have this functionality? if yes, where can i find it please?

Diogo: follow the Akvis link above. If they don't support your version of Paint Shop Pro, then I think you're out of luck. If you really need the functionality, Gimp is free.

Roger Browne: Yes, I know, I use Gimp on Ubuntu but didn't know that it has this plug in. It's not a needed function, but can help in some cases :) Thanks for the advice, I will see what I can do.