Deleting a subject and using generative fill in an image.

Family photo Circa 2000 at Pacific City in Oregon.  My goal was to remove the dog from the shot.

Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence that creates new content from any given source material.  In the case above, Gen AI is used to fill the deleted area where the dog used to be.  It works by using a chosen region as a basis for what the fill will look like.  By leaving the generative fill area blank, the program uses the area around the deleted subject as a reference.

It works something like a healing tool, except with the ability to choose what is used as a reference.  In the above image, the dog was sitting very closely to my wife's legs.  None of the newly generated area had any evidence of her pant colour or texture.  It also estimated what the shadowed area of the rock would look like and made it look very natural.  I was suitably impressed.

The steps to follow in using the object selection tool and replacing it with something else was relatively simple:

1. Open up the file you want to work on in Photoshop CC 2025.  
2. Click on the object selection tool in the tool bar; make sure the first choice is selected.
3. Move the pointer onto the part of the image you want removed.  It will be highlighted with a coloured mask.  
4. Clicking on that subject (clicking on it) will render a familiar selection area.  Move the mouse to the new tool dialogue box and click on the text area that says "Generative fill."
5. The new dialogue box allows you to click on the "Generate" button; leaving the text box blank will allow the program to use the region surrounding the selected area to replace the selection.

In the past, I would spend hours working on this.  It is amazing what can be done now in mere seconds.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com