Adobe ♥’s Avatools

Have you seen the sneak peek video Adobe posted on YouTube for something called “Content-Aware Fill,” a feature to be included in Photoshop CS5? (The full Creative Suite 5, including updates for Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and much more was announced today and will ship in the coming month.)

Check it out; the effect is pretty mind-blowing. Combine that with another magical new CS5 tool called “Puppet Warp” and it’s pretty obvious where we’re headed: Pandora, baby.

James Cameron’s box office-busting blue-skinned extravaganza, set mostly in a wondrous, CGI-generated Eden, presents an idyllic world that for many is far preferable to the vaguely-depressing nature of our all-too real one (“Avatar” is out on DVD April 22). Of course it’s fantasy, but the 3D Pandora paradise is so convincingly realized that you may find yourself scouring Craigslist for timeshares on Hallelujah Mountain.

These days the real and the virtual are commingling to the point where it’s difficult to tell the difference. You can make genuine fortune selling virtual fashion in Second Life, get your Old McDonald on by selling livestock made of bits and bytes in Farmville, pay cold hard cash for make-believe gold in World Of Warcraft. And how many “augmented reality” apps do you have on your iPhone?

Soon 3D TV and Internet will be the standard, “mediated reality” will be the default and everyone will be jacked in 24-7 like some William Gibson wet dream. Will actual reality even matter at that point?

Remember back in the ’90s when Time Magazine stirred controversy by Photoshopping OJ Simpson’s ugly mug? Remember when Iran was accused of doctoring an image of a missile test-firing by adding an extra contrail or two? Or more recently, when Ralph Lauren got called out for making a model’s waist smaller than her head? All that seems so quaint now.

Perhaps the scariest aspect of Photoshop CS5 is that it’s so utterly fast and simple. No longer will it require hours of careful mouse work to radically alter the real. James Cameron spent fifteen years crunching data to bring his epic vision to the screen. Now every Avatool hunched in his Mom’s basement will have the actual tools to effortlessly create a perfect world in just a few clicks, or at least to make some pretty convincing pictures of it.

Photoshop: so easy even a Na’vi could do it.

The line between the virtual and the real has blurred to the point where it hardly exists any more. With Photoshop CS5 Adobe takes us another big step toward erasing it completely.

Tagged as: adobe, avatar, Convergence, tech, technology