Remove unwanted areas from an image for $10 with Snapheal a la Photoshop Content-aware Fill

January 10, 2012 3 Comments

One of the most mind-blowing new features in Photoshop CS5 is the incredible ‘content-aware fill’ feature, which basically allows you to remove an unwanted area from an image by simply selecting it and then choosing Fill from the Edit menu.

When I was at Adobe promoting the eLearning Suite, which included Photoshop CS5, this was the highlight of any demo I did, it was like magic people said. I would pick an image, make a selection around an area I wanted to remove, select a couple of menu options and voilà, the selected area would be magically replaced with the background.

My job was to leverage this feature as one of the selling points for both the eLearning Suite and the Technical Communication Suite, so I put together two videos, one for using it with FrameMaker and one for using it with Captivate.

Back then I couldn’t get enough of trying out this feature on different images. You can see a post I did here with before and after images.

However I also had a lot of people tell me that while this feature was amazing, they just couldn’t afford the high ticket price of Photoshop or the eLearning Suite, which brings me to this app called Snapheal, which does pretty much the same thing, but for only $10.

I am not saying this app replaces Photoshop, however it does a few things very well, including removing unwanted areas from any image you throw at it.

So the next time you need to remove something for an image that you will be including in your favorite Rapid eLearning tool or Techcomm tool, give Snapheal a shot.

Check out this short video I put together on how Snapheal works and let me know what you think and if you have a project coming up where you will use it, also let me know by leaving a comment below.

Here’s a link to the iTunes page for Snapheal.

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Photoshop,Snapheal,eLearning

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About RJ Jacquez

My name is RJ Jacquez and I am a Mobile Learning Analyst, Podcasting and Blogging the Mobile Learning Revolution as it happens. Before that, I worked for Adobe Systems and Macromedia as a Senior Evangelist. I'm honored to be among great company in the following lists and articles: 1) Top 25 Most Influential Bloggers in Technical Communications (http://bit.ly/a8ooZC) 2) Top 20 most influential tweeters in eLearning, training and HR (http://bit.ly/KCOjqf). 3) I was also mentioned in this article on Why Every Company Needs a Robert Scoble (infographic) for my work as an Adobe Evangelist (http://bit.ly/v0IMHs). Please follow me on Twitter @rjacquez

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http://www.cmcandrew.com/robocolumn/ Colum McAndrew

Nice RJ and the a good example of how your new venture allows you to look beyond Adobe’s front door. Thanks again.

Anonymous

Thanks for the comment, Colum. You are right, now that I’m not with Adobe, the possibilities for sharing Tech I discover are amazing. As they say, all things happen for a good reason and the doors that have opened for me since leaving are exciting.

Rick Zanotti

You’re right, RJ, this is pretty darn cool! I think companies like Adobe and maybe Corel need to make their suite and product prices more reachable. These kinds of apps will eventually negate the need for behemoths like Photoshop in which most people only use 5-10% of the capabilities offered.

Nice stuff!