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!