(Lifted this from The Guardian's Viral video chart...) Adobe are working on a feature called Content Aware, which will make the removal of objects and the editing of unwanted imperfections out of photos much easier. The name of the application is the key: Photoshop will decide what will show through from the background when something is removed; will act with awareness of overall picture content. Easier said than done to our human brains, but bear in mind computers up until now have only been able to read pictures as a collection of zeroes and ones. Now, with this function, we are into the realm of computers making educated assumptions given the actual visual content to us humans. Of course, computers have been able to do a minor visual manipulation of late, by adding lens flare or blurring an area, but that is small fries compared to the unprompted removal of entire objects and the replacement what might be behind.

From here, the time when search engines will be able to scan the internet for actual picture content, rather than by name, is therefore getting ever nearer, and that scene in Blade Runner when Deckard pokes around the otherwise impossible depths of a 2D photographic space are theoretically around the corner.

(Tip, in the first instance, the narrator is editing trees in the distance, and off-centre-right. The guide lines he uses aren't initially that easy to spot against the background)...