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Now when you use the Prepare button this area will be protected from distortion. You may need to
select the photo to enable the Prepare
button.
Note:
You can't mask more than half the image. The prepare operation will give an error if you try this.
Adjusting a mask, or adding a new mask
You can't add a mask to an image that has already been stretched. Instead, if you want to add a new
mask or adjust an existing one, you have these options:
1.
Click the Reset button and draw a new mask
2.
Click undo as many times as necessary to get back the mask, and then use the normal drawing
tools to adjust the mask shapes.
3.
Or, before you select the Prepare buttons, copy the mask to the clipboard. If you want to use
this later, perform a Reset on the image, then re-enable mask mode and past the shape back
onto the mask layer.
There is another alternative that you can 'fix' a stretched image using the Optimize
feature, and then apply a new mask. This is not recommended in most cases because it will produce
lower quality results than resetting the image and applying a mask to the original image.
Content-aware photo zoom
An alternative to content aware scaling is the whereby the photo remains the same size and the content is
intelligently zoomed inside it. Here's an example of the effect.
Use the zoom slider on the Infobar to control
content-aware photo zoom.
The picture remains the same size, but the program automatically detects and scales (zooms) the
'interesting' content. Note this is not just a crop of the girl, but that every element, cloud, and grass that
appears in the original is still there in the zoomed version. The program automatically detects the surfer is
the 'region of interest' and so enlarges him only.
Alternative Content Aware Scaling
When stretching photos there are two alternative ways to scale the image. The method of just dragging
the size arrows sometimes works not so well with some image types.
However by holding the "Alt" key when dragging one of the side handles in the Content-aware Scale
Tool
performs a different intelligent scale using an alternative algorithm.
Content Aware Scaling notes

You can only compress an image to half its initial width or height

If you save a document with a photo that has been prepared for Content Aware resizing, then it
saves the resizing information in the document. The advantage of this is that you can later
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