Feathering selections

Yes feather more if you want a softer edge. If your cutting out say a person to drop into another pic you only need a few pixles feather, you don't want him "bleeding" off the edges. On the other hand if your darkening say a sky, you'll want maybe a 100 pixles feather or more to get a really soft "join" so it's not obvious where you have darkened.
 
cheers for the reply, i understand the sofening effect and have used it to effect a few times. I have used 100-150 for sofening the edge of a skyline. When would you use say 150-250 or is it not really necessary?
 
The amount of feathering will vary depending on the size of the image, if you have, for example, an 800 pixel image (accross its longest side) and an identical but larger 4000 pixel image, then a 100 px feather will have a completely different effect on each image. So you can't really generalise as to what degree of feathering to use in any given situation.

If you have a late enough version of PS, use the 'REFINE EDGE' command instead of FEATHER (I think it was introduced in CS3). Make your selection, right click, select 'Refine Edge'. It gives you a lot of controllability over your selection and you can visually see what amount of feathering you will have before finalising it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top