enlarge the background!

[jarulex]

Hello Folks and Good Easter!
my today's problem is how to expand (to widen) the background in a picture without modifying the subject with CS3 (I know that in CS4 there's a solution, but presently I didn't get it). I know few different techniques but none of them are undetectable..... can you suggest a brilliant way to reach my goal?

[Swampy]

Jarulex

The content aware feature of CS4 is not available in CS3. About the best you can do is widen the canvas then get out the clone brush and start filling in the blank areas. Copy/paste with a little warping or free transform or "flipping" can go a long way towards filling in large areas.

[0lBaldy]

a sample image and explaination of what you want to accomplish with it might help get more solutions

[Dick Sallee]

Sounds like you are trying to get more background around the subject, yes? If so, and IF the background is fairly uniform in color, and IF the subject is not close to the background, try this.

First enlarge the canvas to whatever dimension you need. The with the rectangular marquee tool make a long, thin rectangular selection parallel to the side (or top) you are trying to fill into the canvas you have just created. Control-T (free transform) and drag out the side away from the subject until it spreads out the background as much as you need.

This works very well under CERTAIN CONDITIONS. Depending on the image you may get too many distortions in the background but when it works it's very handy.

Have fun. Experiment.

[chillin]

If you use windows, you can download Liquid Resize Retarget for Windows

[jarulex]

Thanks to you all, in facts the main problem is to unify the 'new' (added) background with the 'old' one, that plugin you suggest for Windows certainly will help... someone knows something like that for Mac?

[LQQKER]

If you could be more precise on what your image contains, there are many ways to achieve this. You didn't mention if the subject was cut out from the background, or if the background is one that can be altered in size or if the background can be distorted slightly (such as a sky).
I agree with Baldy, the only way to get a good usable suggestion is to post an image example and give the folks here a bit more to work with. That said, you may already have the tools you need.

[jansandahl]

Like you say, there are a number of solutions and a number of suiting techniques for every image. An example is needed to help you.