How to Fill Empty Spaces in Photoshop

[EmeraldHike]

I see this question asked a lot and I'll do my best at answering it. The problem with it is that there are many answers that can be given. When it comes to editing photos and graphics in Adobe Photoshop, there are any number of empty spaces that may need to be filled. In this post, I'll tell you how to work through a few different alternatives. If you've got specific questions, please ask them down below and I'll try to answer them for you. I've got years of experience in Photoshop, so I may be able to help.

Okay, let's get going. I'm going to open an image inside of Photoshop by going to File > Open, selecting my file and then opening it. For today's tutorial, the photo will be of a loaf of bread.

Just to let you know, the quickest method for filling an empty space with this application is to use the Paint Bucket Tool. I can choose the color with which I'd like to fill and then use the tool to pour that color into the layer I'm working on.



That's not very difficult. It's also not very realistic. Let's get to something more realistic. For that, I'll use the Magic Wand Tool. I'll select that tool from the left toolbar and then select something in the image I'd like to fill.



In this case, I want to make everything that's white in the picture, lime green. So first, I'll select the white parts by clicking on one of them just once with the Magic Wand Tool.



If you look closely at the above image, you'll see the marching ants. They march around the areas that are selected.

Now that I've got a selection, I can fill it with a color. By the way, if you've got an empty space, you can select that just as easily. I'll do that in the next example.

To fill the selection, I'll go to Edit > Fill.



And then I'll choose Foreground Color from the top drop-down box that appears. I've already gone ahead and chosen the lime green color from the color picker.



I'll click OK and anyplace there was a selection will be filled with green. Here's the result of that.



Again, this selection could have been just as easily an empty space. And mind you, when making selections in Photoshop, there are many different adjustments you can make to get the exact selection you'd like. That's an entirely different series of tutorials though. Making selections is an enormous topic.

Let's get to something a little more exciting now. Before we do that though, I'd like to mention one creative method I've seen people use when wanting to fill an area. They go ahead and make a selection in a layer they're working on. Then, once the selection has been made, they press the Delete button on their keyboard. In order to do this, you may need to create a new layer, unlock the image layer you're working on (by clicking on the lock in the layer in the Layers panel), and then move that new layer beneath the image layer. You'll then have two layers and the one with the photo in it will be editable. Anyway, once that's done, press the Delete button and anything that's been selected will be deleted.



To deselect an area, go to the Select > Deselect option in the top menu.



Once you've got the selected area deleted, you can add a new layer beneath it that consists of anything you want. It can be another picture or a solid color or a gradient. Pretty much anything. The good part is that the empty area that the deleted selection left behind will be filled. In my example, I added a bottom layer that consists of a blue to black gradient. It's ugly, but it serves its purpose.



Just to let you know, I've only got two layers in the Layers panel. The top one is the original image layer and the bottom one is the gradient.

For my final example, I'm going to pretend that I pasted this image a bit crooked into an existing file that consisted of a layer with a white background. Here's what that looks like. This is actually what most of you will be working on...something like this.



Do you see how the upper left and right corners are slanted? I'd like to fill these empty areas, but I want to do it so the filled areas match the rest of the photo. For this, I'll need to take advantage of Photoshop's Content Aware technology.

I'll make sure the top image layer is active in the Layers panel by clicking on that layer there. Then, I'll grab my Magic Wand Tool again and click in one of the empty corners. Doing this should select all of the corners.



Once that's done, I'll go to the Edit > Fill menu option again, but this time, I'll choose Content-Aware from the drop-down.



I'll click the OK button and watch as Photoshop fills those empty white areas so they match the surrounding areas. It's pretty cool.

I'll show you the bottom left corner, just so you can see how good of a job it does.



Do you see how Photoshop "predicts" what you'd like in those areas? It's so very cool.

Those are the basic methods for filling empty areas. I will tell you that there were a few different in between steps that I took to get the best results, so if you're having issues with any of these, please let me know and I'll walk you through the process in a more nuanced fashion. Thanks!

 

[EmeraldHike]

Filling Empty Space with Content-Aware Crop in Adobe Photoshop​

One of the most annoying parts of straightening images in Adobe Photoshop has to do with the loss of photo content after the crop. As you twist a photo, the crop area shrinks to compensate for the reduction of area around the edges of the photo. If you've ever worked in Photoshop before and if you have done a lot of cropping, you certainly know what I'm referring to. This is especially bad if you're trying to keep as much of the photo as you possibly can.

Luckily, Photoshop has a really awesome feature that can help you keep as much as the photo as possible, while still straightening it out. This feature is called Content-Aware Crop and it works rather marvelously.

In today's post, I'm going to introduce Photoshop's very cool Content-Aware Crop feature to you. The entire thing takes only one quick click of the mouse to activate, so this should be a very straightforward post.

The Demo Photo​

For this post, I'll be using a photo of a dog in front of a lake. The reason I chose this particular photo is because it's obviously crooked. It needs straightening either by hand or by using the Straighten Tool in Photoshop. I think I'll probably go with the Straighten Tool because it's so easy to use and it'll likely give me a more accurate result. This tool only assists with the crop and it twists the picture in the same exact way as turning it by hand would, so which method I use really makes no difference in the long run.

Straightening the Photo​

This image is already opened in Photoshop in its own tab. To straighten this photo out, I'll click on the Crop Tool icon in the left vertical toolbar to create the crop grid overlay on the photo.



From here, I'll click on the Straighten Tool up in the options bar.



I'll draw the straighten line from one edge of the photo to the other. Since I have a water horizon line, I'll just use that as a guide.



If you look closely at the above screenshot, you'll see the line I just spoke of running from one side to the other.

Once I draw that line, I can see the photo twist one way or the other. And as I stated above, when it does this, the crop grid shrinks down to compensate for the loss of area. Take a look at this next screenshot. The checkerboard area and anything outside the crop grid will be deleted during a normal crop.



If I were to click Enter on my keyboard right now, all that area would be lost. My photo would also be smaller. Since I don't want that to happen, I'll take advantage of the tool this entire post is about.

If I look up at the options bar while the Crop Tool is in action, I'll see a small check box that's labeled Content-Aware. Basically, by checking this box, I'll be telling Photoshop to use its magic to fill in any area that has that checkerboard pattern in it.



The tip in yellow in the above screenshot says Content-Aware Fill Areas Outside the Original Image.

Using Content-Aware Fill During a Crop​

So, what happens when I click Enter to apply the crop? Well, the crop grid won't crop where it currently is. It will actually move back to the outer edge of the entire photo and crop from there, making it so I won't lose any material from the photo. While that's happening, Photoshop will fill in any empty areas inside of that outer edge. I'll go ahead now and press Enter.



You probably can't see the edges that were filled in because Photoshop did such a good job at it, but they were. Photoshop used an algorithm to fill the areas with colors and shapes that were similar to what was near the area to be filled. That's why they match up so well.

Oftentimes, when attempting something like this, Photoshop won't get the results exactly perfect. You may notice some odd artifacts or something like that inside the areas that used to be empty checkerboard pattern. When this happens, feel free to use the Spot Healing Brush Tool or the Lasso Tool combined with a fill option to clean any errors up.

As I said at the beginning of this post, this small feature in Photoshop is quite simple to take advantage of. I hope I did a good job explaining how to use it. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this post, please leave them below. Thanks for reading!

 

[EmeraldHike]

How to Fill in Empty Edges After Cropping in Adobe Photoshop​

I have another really cool tip for you today. You can put this one in the “best tips ever” category if you want. It’s going to save a lot of people a lot of headaches. I know it did for me when I first learned about this.

Have you ever rotated and cropped an image, only to be left with those empty areas up in the corners? You know which one’s I’m talking about. The ones that show the transparent checkerboard background. This type of thing is really annoying to deal with because oftentimes we want to keep as much of the image as possible. If all we have to do is a bit of twisting or rotating, wouldn’t it be better to keep those corner areas? I think it would be.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you how you can fill those empty areas in for many cases inside of Adobe Photoshop. While this technique won’t work for all cases, it will for a good majority of them. And it’s a really good technique too because Photoshop these days does an awesome job when it comes to healing and filling.

I’ll first take a regular average photo and rotate it, just to show you what I’m talking about here. Perhaps my descriptions up above wasn’t all that clear. I want you to really know what I’m talking about. After that, I’ll crop the rotated photo, which will leave behind some empty edges. I’ll then use a few tools and some tricks to fill those empty edges so you would never know they were empty in the first place. You’re going to love this post.

The Demo Photo​

For this technique to work, you’ll need to use a photo that is hospitable to it. The one I chose has nice homogeneous edges. I think the one below is just perfect.

Rotating & Cropping the Photo​

Okay, the image is already opened up inside of Photoshop. To start things off, I’m going to use the Crop Tool to give things a little twist.



Once the tool is active, I’ll place my mouse pointer just outside the outer edge, click and drag up or down. Doing this will give me those empty edges I spoke of above.



Now, let’s say that it was critical that I keep as much of this photo intact, but since those edges are empty, I’m sort of stuck. That doesn’t matter, because with what I’m going to show you below, I can still click and drag the corners of this crop area outward. I’ll do that now so the photo area is the same as when I started. When I’m done, I’ll press Enter on my keyboard to apply the changes.



This is what I’m left with. I’m sure you’ve faced something like this is you’ve spent enough time in Photoshop. It usually happens when you’re dealing with a crooked photo and you’re attempting to straighten it out. In my case, I’m actually making the photo crooked, but just ignore that. I chose a photo with a distinct horizon line so it’s easier to see that the image has been rotated. Anyway, just because you’re trying to straighten a photo out, it doesn’t mean that you’d like to lose part of the photo itself.

Filling in Those Empty Areas​

To correct the problem in this image, I’ll head over to the left toolbar and choose the Magic Wand Tool.



After that, I’ll make sure the Contiguous option up in the top options bar is unchecked. That’s important because the areas that will need to be selected aren’t touching one another. After that, I’ll go ahead and select all four empty areas by clicking in just one of them with the tool.



You can see the marching ants surrounding the empty areas in the screenshot above.

The next step is very important as well. In order to avoid a frustrating little detail, I’ll enlarge each selected area by five pixels. If I didn’t do that, you’d see a faint white line that traces each area. I’d like to avoid that.

To enlarge each selected area, I’ll go up to the Select > Modify > Expand menu item and click.



When the Expand Selection dialog box appears, I’ll enter the number 5 and then press OK.



If you look very closely at the marching ants below, you’ll notice that they are encroaching on the image by a few pixels. This is what I want.



This next step will actually fill the empty areas quite wonderfully. I’ll go to the Edit > Fill item up in the top menu.



When the Fill dialog box appears, I’ll choose Content-Aware from the Contents drop-down. I’ll then press the OK button to apply the fill.



Here is what things look like after they’ve been filled.



To get rid of the marching ants, I’ll use the Select > Deselect menu item up top.



And here’s the final product. Doesn’t it look good?



If there were any missed areas or areas that weren’t exactly to my liking, I’d use the Spot Healing Brush Tool to touch them up. Overall, I think this is an excellent method for rectifying a very annoying situation and for keeping as much of the photo as possible when rotating and cropping.

——

I hope I clearly explained how to fill in the empty edges when it comes to rotating and cropping an image in Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions about this post, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!