But while testing this new feature in the CS5 prerelease beta I found that while you could select an area and then press the delete key to bring up the Fill dialog window, the use of the delete key would only work on the Background layer and not on any duplicate layers.
Strange right? This drove me nuts but…
There is a reason for this and it because you can’t “Delete” data from a Background layer to transparency, so that’s why the Fill dialog comes up. It just happens that Adobe lists Content-Aware as the first item in the drop down menu of the Fill window.
While you can use Edit > Fill… from the menu on duplicate layers, I wasn’t satisfied with that option so I decided to start pressing keystrokes to see if I could get the Fill dialog to come up on a duplicate layer. Well sure enough, if you press the Shift+delete key with a selection on a duplicate layer the Fill dialog will appear and you can simply press enter to activate the Content-Aware fill option.
I hope this little tip helps you out while using Content-Aware fill in your work!
by Scott
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Thanks for the tip, I’ve been searching for the whole day for a solution to this! I just tried, but for some reason the Shift-Delete does not work. It has the same effect as a simple delete… I am wondering, is there something I did not catch?
Interesting… I’m still using the CS5 beta. Are you using the release version? I’ve yet to install the release version as it’s on my todo list!!
I’ll have to check this out and let you know what I find. Thanks for the feedback!
Yes, mine is the final release (v12.0), CS5 Extended. I am running the x64 version, wonder if that affects this trick?
You never know… It’s possible. I’ll have to install the final release and check it out myself. I’ll post back here with my results!
OK Scott, thanks! I’ll follow up then.
I’ve finally installed the release version of Adobe CS5 (standard edition) and using the Shift+Del key still works to bring up Content-Aware Fill on duplicate layers.
Thanks a lot! I was getting crazy trying to get content-aware fill with the Del key!
Glad it helped!!
I finally bring up the “content aware” options. A little circle appears and then the selected image disappears from the screen and only the background with the grid shows. What am I doing wrong? THANKS. Please help.
Your explanation about this particularity of the Photoshop CS5 Content-Aware Fill only working on a background image was very useful to me. I was getting frustrated with this tool because I couldn’t figure out why sometimes the Content-Aware Fill was available and other times it was not.
Thanks!
You are very welcome and I’m glad this helped you out. I was very frustrated as well and when I figured this out I had to share it.
Help! Every time I try to delete something, I get this dialog. It’s driving me nuts How do I delete without this dialog constantly popping up. I’m not holding the shift key down, so I don’t understand why I’m getting it.
Having to do a two step process every time I want to delete something is nuts!
What’s going on?
Thank you so much! I was having the opposite problem . . . seeing the content-aware was driving me crazy. I tried hitting shift+delete, and it keeps the dialog box from coming up while deleting on the background!
Awesomee !!! Thanks