Generative Fill, a work in progress

The above image was one that I made a few years back, and after despite an initial thought, the multicolored wall just did not match the mood that I was going for in the image. Despite various techniques with radial spotlighting, burning, cropping the background still seemed distracting to the theme. Now of course I did have options.

I could have:

• Found a better background (my collection or downloaded)
• Imported into the main image
• Made and appropriate selection, possibly including layer mask work
• Adjusted the opacity to block out the colors and candles along the wall
• Blended it to match general tone and lighting

So, in my case, these actions would have taken at least 30 minutes if not longer. Considering I had multiple poses for my subject, the editing time could have increased significantly.  

Advantages are:

• I would have likely used the same background that I liked for all images
• I likely would have had a series of steps with lighting and blending that would work with most of the imagesdis

Disadvantages:

• Time consuming, especially if I had a large number of files to edit
• Probably at least slightly inconsistent between images

The second image was created with Generative fill in photoshop. 

• I made a selection around the background
• Told Photoshop that I wanted a stone wall in the dialog box.

Advantage:

• Trimmed my editing time by 75%
• Had several options for stone walls to pick from with blending, lighting, and masking complete

Disadvantages:

• Wall style not immediately replicated between images
• Some very strange options were offered

Generative fill looks to have a good start with options that will help most photographers and certainly can be a time saver. It is still in the beta release and hopefully will be even more refined when it is released in its final version.