[Rob de Winter]: Sometimes you just need a little more space around the photo, or you realize you need a landscape version of something you shot in portrait.
Generative Expand lets you add that extra space, and Photoshop fills it in based on what's already in the image.
[Cut to Rob de Winter in his studio.]
I'm Rob de Winter, Adobe instructor, designer, and author from the Netherlands, and in this video, I'll show you how to reframe and expand photos and how to optimize them.
Reframe a photo to a new aspect ratio
[Photoshop opens a vertical photo of a sailboat on the ocean horizon.]
This is a photo of a sailboat on the horizon already opened in Photoshop, but I want to add a bit of space around the image and save it in a 4:5 ratio for social media.
In that way, I can also reposition the sailboat to sit on the upper left third of the frame.
To do this, select the Crop Tool and in the Contextual Task Bar, set the ratio to 4:5.
Make the crop area as large as you like, drag the photo itself within the crop area to move it, so the sailboat ends up in the upper left third of the frame.
We now have some empty space around the edges that needs to be filled in.
Click Generative Expand in the Contextual Task Bar, then click Generate to generate three variations of the space around your photo.
Choose from multiple generated variations
Click through the variations in the Contextual Task Bar, or click the variation thumbnails in the Properties panel to see which you prefer.
If you don't like the results, just click Generate again.
Here I go with the third variation, which gives a great result.
[Photoshop switches to the vertical photo of the rusted anchor on the rocky coast.]
Now, let's take a portrait photo and turn it into a 16:9 landscape, for example, to use as a desktop wallpaper.
This is an image I shot in Grand Canaria.
Select the Crop Tool, set the ratio to 16:9 in the Contextual Task Bar, and drag the crop area out to the size you want.
I want the main subjects to sit in the right third of the frame, which means in this case, quite a lot will be generated on the left side.
Click Generative Expand in the Contextual Task Bar, then click Generate to generate three variations of the space around your photo.
Sharpen and clean up the result
The result is really impressive considering how much was added, but if you zoom in, you can see that the generated area is slightly softer than the original photo because the generated resolution is lower than the original resolution, and that's where Enhance detail comes in.
In the Properties panel, hover over the thumbnail of the generated variation and click the Enhance detail button.
Photoshop upscales the generated result and adds it as a new variation.
Here's the enhanced result, and here's the original.
You can clearly see the difference between the two.
The sharpness now matches the rest of the photo.
Take a close look at the generated areas and check if anything was added that you don't want.
Here, Photoshop added an element that I don't like so much.
Create a new empty layer in the Layers panel, select the Remove Tool, and make sure Sample all layers is checked in the Options Bar, and then paint over the unwanted elements and the Remove Tool takes care of the rest.
That's Generative Expand [Cut back to Rob in his studio.] - change the ratio, fill in the missing areas, and clean up with the Remove Tool.
Now give it a try yourself.
Again, I'm Rob de Winter, and I'll see you in one of the next videos.
What you’ll learn
Reframe a photo to a new aspect ratio
Cropping to a different ratio, like 4:5 for social or 16:9 for wallpaper, often leaves empty space around the original image. Generative Expand fills in that space based on the rest of the photo.
Choose from multiple generated variations
Generative Expand creates a few different options to pick from, so you can compare and choose the one that looks best. If none of them work, you can generate again for new variations.
Sharpen and clean up the result
Enhance Detail sharpens generated areas so they match the resolution of the original photo. Use the Remove Tool to clean up anything generated that doesn't belong.
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