"Content Aware Fill" in GIMP - Resynthesizer & Heal Selection Walkthrough

patdavid | Software Techniques | Published Nov 14, 2012

A Missing Tower (from Eiffel Tower by Terrazzo on Flickr)

While many people may have heard of Adobes "Content Aware Fill" for PS, most may not realize that the work that went into producing those results had been done and was available in GIMP back in 2005.  Likely the PS tool was an implementation of work performed by Dr. Paul Harrison in his PhD thesis.

Dr. Harrison also produced a tool for GIMP called Resynthesizer that (among other things) could be used to adaptively fill a selection with textures generated from other parts of the image.

Using Resynthesizer and a script for GIMP called "Heal Selection", similar results to "Content Aware Fill" can be created.

Select an object to remove	"Heal Selection" results

Resynthesizer will build a new texture to fill in your selected area based on texture data surrounding the selection.  It does very well when there are good textures around your selection:

Multiple objects can be selected and easily fixed. (Beach Erosion by Kevin Dooley)	Even large areas (the house upper right) heal nicely

 

Heal Selection will also allow you to fill in areas of an image with surrounding texture as well.  So panorama shots with missing areas can be extended cleanly to fill the frame:

Extending missing areas of an image utilizing nearby textures.

Textures rebuilt and filled into missing areas. (KU Skyline Panorama by David DeHetre)

 

A full walkthrough and further examples can be found here:

Getting Around in GIMP - Heal Selection

Let me know what you think!