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How to extend a background in Photoshop
In This Article
If you’ve ever been editing a photo and wished you’d captured it from a step further back, you’ve come to the right place. This guide will show you how to extend a background in Photoshop in just a few steps.
Extending a simple background only takes a few clicks in Photoshop thanks to a tool called Content-Aware Fill. Here’s how to use it.
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What you’ll need:
The Short Version
How to extend a background in Photoshop
Step1
Open your image in Photoshop
This can be any image with a simple background you want to extend, such as a sky.
Step2
Select the crop tool
The first step is to extend your canvas.
Step3
Extend the canvas beyond your image
Click on the tick when you’re done.
Step4
Choose any selection tool and select the area you want to extend
For this, we used the rectangular marquee tool to select the existing image and inverted that selection to highlight only the extended parts of the canvas we just added.
Step5
Click Edit
This option is in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Step6
Choose Content-Aware Fill
This can be found in the Edit dropdown menu.
Step7
Hit OK
You can also make any changes at this stage.
Troubleshooting
If you change your mind, simply hold Ctrl/Cmd and Z or click Edit and Undo Content-Aware Fill.
If you’re working with more complex backgrounds, you can also extend an image using the Generative Fill tool in Photoshop (Beta). This means you can enter a text prompt or allow Adobe’s new Firefly generative AI model to do the work.
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Hannah joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating with a degree in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s also worked and studied in the US, holding positions …
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
