I have been hearing about how good Photoshop CS5’s Content Aware Fill is, so I tried to give it a chance. I took 7 different shots at Round Bald on NC/Tennessee border during spring break, using those I created a panorama. I used Photomerge in CS5 to stitch all the images, so it did not took me much effort. Here is the outcome –

As you can see, lack of tripod will always result in these unfilled spots in a panorama. Usually when I have situations like these, I get the best possible crop of it and utilize it. This time I tried to use Content Aware Fill. The result is shown below. You will notice it has filled almost all the spots. The procedure I followed was to use lasso took to select dark areas and delete that portion. When deleting I get an option to use Content Aware Fill and I said Ok. This did not happen in one go, when I selected a large area, I got the error message that my computer does not have enough memory (RAM), even though I have 3GB RAM on my system. I used bits and pieces to fill the image and took me less than 10 minutes. I deleted 7 different selection to get this result.

As you can notice, there are some improper edges and some fills are not smooth. But these can be smoothened easily by putting some more effort.

I do not like to use Photoshop for my images, not because its not good tool but I like to use my photography skills more then to use photograph as my canvas. This certainly is a step too far into that direction and I do not like it. I agree their are times when we need to have good image, but personally, I like to show what real world looks like. Good bye Content Aware Fill.