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http://blogs.adobe.c.../caf_in_ps.html
If you were like me, you drool over what content awareness does and that is this tool has the ability to remove objects quicker and cleaner like they never there in the first place. After spending some time with the content awareness tool, some of that time was actually finding it, content awareness does have some drawbacks to it and so that is what I want to bring up while demonstrating how content awareness works.
One of the first things I notice about this tool is that is has a unique flaw or rather an interesting side affect to it. It acts like the clone stamp plain and simple and will show it by using the following image.
What I am going to do is use the content awareness tool and select the sky above the buildings and after I select it you will see why I reference the clone stamp tool in Photoshop.
As you can see, if you were to do the same thing with the clone stamp tool, more or less unblended, you pull off the same result, thus the reason it is unique flaw or interesting side affect. Why is this important, simple you can create interesting textures or background images on the fly and that could benefit graphic designers in some way when creating posters and large scale images.
Not to beat a dead horse, well I will, content awareness is a more efficient clone stamp tool because of the fact content aware blend more efficiently then clone stamp, and what could take hours could take seconds or minutes with it.
The next thing I like to point out is that brush size matters, you will notice that there is only one brush type with limited features, and this is important because of what I mentioned earlier about the clone stamp. However, in the image below I will show you what happens when you use a large brush size with a smaller object.
As you can see I basically clone stamp part of building where that metal piping use to be, however, if you were to match the brush size to the object you want to remove, then it looks like it was never there.
As you can see, it looks a lot cleaner, however, if you have a trained eye or zoom in closer, you can tell that that area looks off in some way and if you were to blow this image up, well it could be quite an embarrassment for you if it looks obvious that something was removed.
Now, if the item you want to remove is behind a solid color or has no detailed background, then there isn't much of a problem, however, if you were to do this in a picture like the one I am using then it takes careful execution to blend the area to match it with everything else.
The final thing I would like to discuss is extending the size of the image using content awareness. This is where the tool is most broken, and I bet your asking why do you even want to extend the image to begin with? Well, actually that is a good question and the best answer I can come up with is cut off images or resizing them to look bigger. Regardless, the role of content awareness is to fill in the gap and so what I did was resize the canvas to proper 00 width and height i.e. 700x500.
The reason I say it's broken is that you can't just fill in the white area automatically, you have to go through a painstaking process to try to match the area with the rest of the image and after trying various methods. It gets rather brutal, but odds are if a person spends enough time with the image it is possible to make it work. However, if your working with solid colors with little detail it won't matter, but if you're using an image like I am you just want to go RAWR!
In short, if you want to extend the image in anyway, take panorama shots and just combine and blend for best photo layout, hopefully in the coming months and possible updates, content awareness can be improved on.
It is an awesome tool that will save a lot of man hours, but with the few things I have pointed out in this brief tutorial, content awareness can't be used all the time. However, with a lot practice, patience, and tools, the untrained eye might not even tell the difference.
This is the content awareness tool and I am Saint Michael so long and goodnight.
This was a good intro SM. I'm a total n00b to photoshop and wanted to start learning, so I downloaded the trial version of CS5, and started watching a few videos on Youtube. I have a quick doubt if you don't mind - in one of the videos, CS2 (or 3) was being used, and there was a feature called "Extract" or something like that in the "Filter" menu. It was used like an alternative to the Magic Wand tool, to separate an image from its background. I liked the feature since I felt it gives more control, but in CS5 I couldn't find it anywhere. Do you know if it's hidden elsewhere?
I was automatically logged out and didn't notice it. 
A lot of videos on Youtube still show people using CS2 AND CS3. Does that mean CS4&5 have lesser features or is it simply because the people haven't been able to update yet? I still have 4 weeks of my trial of CS5 so I want to learn as much as possible before it expires!
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