What’s the difference between Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill and Content Aware Fill? We both explain them and show you how they differ.
What is Photoshop Generative Fill?
Adobe has incorporated Firefly (AI-generated art app) into Photoshop (Beta) 12.4.6. This allows you to add, remove, and extend your image by typing in text prompts. Or even not using them, in which case, it operates more similarly to Content Aware Fill. Sort of.
Generative Fill attempts to match the original scene’s perspective, lighting, and style. In other words, it attempts to create an image that also has appropriate shadows, reflections, lighting and perspective.
What is Photoshop Content Aware Fill?
Content Aware Fill has been around for a few years. When it first came out, it seemed absolutely miraculous. Content Aware Fill analyzes a selection area and attempts to reconstruct the missing parts using the surrounding pixels. It guesses at the color, brightness, texture, and other details. Content Aware, however, does not incorporate Firefly. Therefore, it has not analyzed other photos from Adobe Stock to inform its decision-making process. And of course, you cannot input key prompts to add an element to your image. In other words, you cannot use Content Aware Fill to add a gorilla wearing a tutu to your image.
Comparing Generative Fill to Content Aware Fill in an image
I used both methods with a long exposure night photo of an old abandoned car. The back window of another vehicle was reflecting a lot of light from the nearby LED light of a house. I found this distracting.
How would these two methods fare when attempting to remove the bright window and lens flare?
Using Content Aware Fill to remove the bright window
As you can see, it took elements nearby and incorporated it into the selected area. Look closer. The lens flare from the light does not look realistic. Even worse, it “grabbed” some of the weather vane and made it part of the selection. Twice. And it did not “rebuild” the window. It simply took elements surrounding the selected area and tried to make sense of it.
If I had used Content Aware Fill by using the pulldown menu and selected the areas that I wanted to inform Content Aware Fill, I could have avoided things such as the weather vane from appearing in the selected area.
Using Generative Fill to remove the bright window
As you can see, the flare looks more realistic. It also “rebuilt” the window in the back. Best of all, it doesn’t look smudged or have a couple of weather vanes in the selected area.
Because Generative Fill is informed by many other photos from Adobe Stock, it knows how to complete the flare and the window. It does so even if those elements are not present in your photo. Consequently, it looks far more satisfactory and realistic.
You should know that as part of Adobe’s Content Credentials feature, AI images made in Photoshop will be encoded with an invisible digital signature indicating whether it’s human-made or the product of AI.
Opinions on Generative Fill with AI?
Generative Fill and AI in general are hot-button topics right now. Even though it’s new, everyone seems to have an opinion about it.
I wrote an article offering scenarios for when you might use Generative Fill when adding, removing, or extending without creating something overtly “fake.” Have a read and let us know how you feel about this fledgling technology.
