Adobe's new Photoshop Creative Suite "CS5" edition features a very cool technology called "content aware delete", this is a system that allows you to remove unwanted elements from your photographs and the software algorithms will lock onto elements within your picture to back-fill the newly created space.

When it works, it will make your jaw drop. Trouble is, its far too hit and miss to be practical.

Below is a pic of 2 of my kids playing in their sand pit, my wife was also in the picture, I chose to remove her from the scene and instead focus the attention on the kids. The red arrow's all point to artefacts introduced to the scene by Adobe's "content aware delete".

This is no random occurrence either, in my tests content aware delete only works in around 1 out of 5 occasions. I'll post more examples of its failures (and its successes) as they occur.

Dear Adobe,

Attached are 2 photo's, i wanted to try out your content aware delete option. As you can see from picture 1, there's a lot of clutter on the roof of this house:

I also wanted to remove the trees on the extreme left and right edges, the light shades by the rear door and the steps adjacent. Having watched your youtube videos, I was confident your new amazing $1000 software would handle it, I sat back with anticipation and was amazed at the results:

Are you as amazed as I am? This is ONLY using content aware delete and WOW, what a joke! I'm particularly impressed with its ability to do "sod all", and its total inability to manage replicating a clear blue sky made my jaw drop with amazement.

Needless to say, I'm a little disappointed.

Andy