I usually do square or horizontal albums and when I want to do a full spread, I have no choice but to crop. The problem is that I often need to either cut of legs or heads. And that really isn’t an option.

Enter CS5 and “content aware scaling”. This is pretty much the coolest thing on the planet. At least, that’s what I think this week.

Here we have a an engagement photo that I want to cover the whole spread. The album is square format (1:1 pages, with 1:2 spreads). As you can see there is a ton of white space over on the right. I need to get rid of that. Back in the day (before CS5) I would just fill in the background with a color, gradient or texture. But now we have CS5!

Now, I just go to the Edit Menu and choose “Content Aware Scale.” This is one of the new, super tricky, CS5 additions. And I can say, I’m pretty happy with it.

Now I just grab the edges and start dragging. And it finds elements that are repeatable or “stretchable” and just does it’s thing. Check out this super cool result.

One of the reasons I really wanted to build Album Builder in Photoshop is that these Adobe guys come up with some really cool features. And I want to be able to use them while designing albums. If you use album software that does not work in Photoshop, you can always just open up your images and “pre-stretch” them.

Fundy

Fundy is the creator of the Fundy Album Builder, Workflow and Fundy Album Proofer. Free trials available here.

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