Photoshop Generative Fill

I’m sure you’ve heard that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay and that you can’t stop the tide with wishful thinking.

Personally, I don’t think we should fear AI (in this context, Generative AI), just as many didn’t fear previous industrial and technological revolutions. Harnessed properly, AI can help us work smarter and faster.

Fancy speeches aside, this post is all about how to use AI technology in Photoshop. By the way, all the images in this post were generated with the assistance of Photoshop’s AI. Cool, huh?

The tips in this post are based on my course Photoshop Essentials. When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Get started here.

Ready to have a look at how these amazing features work? Let’s dive into 5 ways you can use generative AI in Photoshop and start learning all the cool stuff the future is bringing!

Pro tip: Using Generative AI doesn’t mean that having strong skills in Photoshop isn't important. Not at all. There are still considerable limitations in AI and the way it reads and meets your prompts - AI still struggles with animal and human anatomies and many of the solutions it presents are often distorted or have some random elements thrown in that don’t make any sense.

Generative AI in Photoshop – Hands-on tips

From a basic point of view, realize that Generative AI in Photoshop stands on two pillars: selection and prompts. So, plan your project, sketch it first if necessary and define your selection in context with what you want to remove, replace, or generate brand new – it will impact what Photoshop’s AI delivers. There’s a lot to say about prompts and prompt engineering, but to start, I recommend two things:

Forget verbs. You do not have to say “add” something, “remove” something or “paint” something blue. Type the outcome you need, not the work the AI will have. Select a wall and type “window with curtains” and not “add window over the wall and add some curtains to it”.

Be specific, don’t use too many words. If anything is off you can fine tune it afterwards. As you’ll see, typing only one word, like “bridge”, can be enough to start your edit.

Let’s have a look at some cool Generative AI effects!

Edit 1 - Changing Landscape.

Let’s start with a fictional riverside city image and modify it to make it more spectacular! Remember, this is not about accurate composition or realism, we’re exploring Generative AI's potential.

I think this river needs a bridge. Let’s make our selection. I’ll use the Marquee Tool, press “M” on my keyboard and click and drag to draw a rectangle at the bottom half of the image.

I’m telling Photoshop that these are the limits for the bridge. Now all I must do is type “bridge” on the generate field in the Contextual Bar below the image and click on “Generate”.

AI generated a bridge over my image. Let’s have a look at what else we have. As you can see in the Layers Panel, the bridge is a smart object, identified as a Generative Layer with a “stars” icon in the corner of the thumbnail, and has its own layer mask. In the Properties Panel, you can adjust your prompt and find three variations for our bridge. If we press the Generate button without changing the prompt, Photoshop will create three more options for you to choose from.

We now have six variants, you can browse through them until you find the perfect one, keep the others or delete them, or generate new alternative bridges. Remember that the more variations you have, the more of your computer resources will be necessary, so keep this as clean as possible. Let’s keep the first bridge and add some more cool things.

I want this city to have a fun appeal, so I’ll ask the City Hall for an amusement park. Using the Lasso tool, we create a selection in the background, once again in context with the element’s expected size and proportions.

All we need to do now is move to the Contextual Bar, type “ferris wheel” and click on “Generate”.

We now have a ferris wheel inviting us to a fun amusement park downtown! A new Layer was created over the one with the bridge and you can check out ferris wheel variations and generate new ones, if needed.

Looking carefully at our composition, I feel we need some life generated into the image. Using the Lasso tool, we’ll draw a small shape under the bridge and tell Photoshop’s AI that we need some ducks swimming there. Type “ducks swimming” and hit that “Generate” button.

Happy ducks swimming in our river, very cool! Same thing, our ducks have their own layer in our Layers panel and we can check out variations in the Properties panel or ask for more ducks.

Let’s go crazy. With the Lasso tool selected, we’ll draw a shape in the sky, type “UFO” and click on Generate. I’m using the Lasso tool for these selections, but you can use whatever selection tool you feel more comfortable with.

And we now have a UFO hovering over our city! We could make many more changes to this file, including selecting the houses on the left bank and generating new ones or adding clouds to the sky, you can go ahead and try some more magic. I’ll just add a train over the bridge before we move to the next example.

Timeout #1

Is AI a true revolution that will transform the way we work in UX design or threaten our careers? Explore this article to understand how Artificial Intelligence will power up all of the Design Thinking stages and open doors to new perspectives and better outcomes.

Edit 2 - Cast reflections.

We’ve seen we can transform images by adding new elements to them. Let’s do some of that but with a twist.

This is an image of a desert with a pyramid on the left. Let’s have some fun and see how Photoshop’s Generative AI works with what surrounds the generated elements.

Now let’s add some water to this arid scenery. I’ll draw a selection close to the pyramid and ask for a refreshing lake. The twist: it’s water, it reflects things.

So, I’ll type “reflecting lake” as a prompt and click on “Generate” – as a shortcut, you can also press Enter after typing your prompt.

Done! Photoshop’s Generative AI observed the element’s surroundings and placed them as a reflection in the surface of the lake. It’s an amazing effect that adds extra realism to the outcome. I love this feature and think has enormous potential. It’s also great when you are expanding some images, but we will get to that in a bit.

Edit 3 – Remove and replace things.

For this example, we’re having a look at an ordinary street and we want to eliminate some distractions and add a surprising effect. Let’s see how we can do it.

Let’s remove that waste bin and that bench from the picture. We want the Remove Tool selected, an AI innovation in Photoshop. We can adjust the brush size in the toolbar on top or with the shortcut Alt + right mouse button + drag left or right, and all we must do is paint the object we want to remove.

Next, we remove the bench...

...and that annoying lamp post up the street.

It’s so easy! I think we can remove these white lines as well.

We have eliminated all the distractions and now we are free to summon some AI superpowers to generate awesome stuff like this!

Timeout #2

Thinking about AI, and how it will change societies, must include a wide debate on ethics and a conscious observation of all the opportunities and risks that will rise. The United Nations have been promoting these discussions and trying to influence governments to act responsibly and protect their citizens.

Edit 4 - Replace model’s clothes.

Let’s do some fashion work. You’ll find the model a bit quirky, but I kept it that way to underline what I mentioned earlier – AI still struggles with human and animal anatomies, but the goal in this example is to show you how to replace things in an image.

That white color feels boring.- let’s change it up! We can use the Quick Selection tool, click and drag over the t-shirt and when our selection is complete type “striped t-shirt” and hit Enter! Bang!

A brand-new shirt, instantly generated, no effort at all! Let’s take it to the next level and change the whole outfit! We do another quick selection, making sure all the clothes are selected.

Now let’s type in our Contextual Bar “leather jacket” and hit “Generate” or the Enter button.

We can also add that extra sexy touch with a cool “leather hat” and...

Yes, it looks weird, doesn’t it…? Fun, though! Moving on!

Edit 5 - Start from Zero.

This one is special because we are starting with a clean canvas, we’ll expand its limits and add some fun stuff. Let’s go for one last lap!

Let’s open a new artboard with nothing on it, just a white background layer, use the Marquee tool to select the whole artboard and type “beach landscape” as our prompt and gently smash that Enter key.

After Photoshop generates our new beach – don’t forget to check those variations – we are ready to expand its limits.

Let’s try out the Generative Expand feature and break this image’s horizontal limits. To do that, we must pick the Crop tool from the left toolbar or hit “C” on our keyboard. Then we look up at the Properties bar and on “Fill” we click the option “Generative Expand”.

Next, we expand our image to the left and to the right and Photoshop will fill in the blank spaces with some extra landscape. As we’ve seen with the reflecting lake, Photoshop reads the original image, considers its context, and limits and does the amazing! You don’t even need to type any further instructions. Hit Enter and wait.

Presto! This is great! Yes, I know that Content-Aware Fill used to do something like this, but trust me, Generative Fill opens a whole new dimension of possibilities. This is Multiverse material!

I’ll just use what we have learned in these examples to add some finishing touches to our beach project, such as removing part of the sand’s vegetation, adding a cruise ship close to the horizon and a beach bar by the sea to welcome the tourists, some chairs and… well, you get the picture, have a great vacation!

Who owns AI Generated Content?

There are huge questions about copyright when it comes to AI Machine Learning and AI Generated Contents. Countries all over the world, with the help of legal and tech teams, are trying to legislate on a phenomena that “exploded” too fast and in too many directions at the same time.

Today, as I write this post, there are debates, even lawsuits, around author rights, from the content used to train AI models, to the ones “translated” into a brand new artworks, and down to the final art itself.

You can read more on how this is being studied and legislated in the US and in Europe. My advice to you, when you are working with AI generated content, make sure to always check each tool’s commercial use terms and conditions - they are being updated all the time and it is safer to always make sure you are acting according to the law and respect for copyrights.

What’s Next?

Check out my Photoshop Essentials course for everything you need to know about getting started with Photoshop.

When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Figma, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Get started here.

See you in class! - Dan