Making a good Feathered Selection in Photoshop
posted on 3rd of april, 2009
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For those of you who use Photoshop CS and above, making a selection in order to do a localized adjustment to an image, can be daunting particularly as it relates to creating smooth, seamless transitional lines that don't reveal your changes in a hard edged way.
One easy way to accomplish this is to simply use whatever tool you wish to use to make your selection around your object, (ie. .the lasso tool, magnetic lasso, rectangular tool, etc. . ) and then after the selection is made simply type 'q' on your keyboard to enter the 'quick mask' mode.
Where you have made your selection is now surrounded by a red tinted mask. Everything red will be hidden or prevented from being modified by any changes you make. But chances are the edges of the mask are still very sharp and hard edged. If you leave them like this they will show off any changes you make as a hard line of demarcation on your image, particularly if you are making exposure, brightness or saturation changes to the selection.
So what you want to do is feather the edge. With the quick mask still active, simply click on 'filters', 'blur', 'gaussian blur' and set the blur amount to a level that makes your mask edges blur appropriately so that you create a nice long transitional edge to your selection. The advantage of this is that instead of trying to 'feather' your selection blind as you would have to do if you simply used a lasso tool and then tried to set a 'feather' amount on the toolbar, you now have a real-time, visual display of exactly how far your feathering will extend beyond your selection.
Once you have the blur amount looking like you want it, click ok, and then exit the quick mask mode by hitting 'q' on your keyboard once again. Now you will be presented with the famous little marching ants that indicate you are back to your selection. Once there you can adjust saturation, sharpness, levels, contrast, exposure, vibrance, or any one of many adjustments available, to your selection area. You will notice that the soft feathered transitions will make your adjustments seamless and invisible.
You can also hide the selection by simply clicking Alt-H, or Option-H on the Mac, so that you can see your changes without the 'marching ants' getting in the way. To see your selection again, simply click Alt or Option-H once again.
Have fun with this method.
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Tags: cs feathered photoshop selection technique
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Comments (12)
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Comment by Onime
on May 01, 2009
Nice tech!! you should try expand and contract selection too for the best result. |
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Comment by Ladyminnie
on April 28, 2009
I am gonna try this tonight
mask is still a little bit blur to me |
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Comment by Yevettem
on April 08, 2009
Great post, and very helpful. I didn't know you could do that! Thank you. |
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Comment by Drizzle
on April 08, 2009
Thankyou, incredibly heplful
Sizzle Creative Agency |
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Comment by Lightart
on April 07, 2009
I also meant to mention in the article that you can also change the area of active selection from the current selection to the 'unselected' area by typing in Ctl, Shift, I. this will make your active selection (assuming you are in the selection mode and not the quick mask mode) the area that was previously masked. This is valuable when you want to change the exposure or sharpening or any other variable, relative to the changes you may have made to the original selection. You can move back and forth between selections by alternately pressing Ctl-Shift-I. |
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Comment by Flowerpistol
on April 07, 2009
Thank you for the quick, easy and very effective tip. I've always been a little confused about masks, but I tried it out and loved the results! |
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Comment by Preckas
on April 06, 2009
Thank you. This is very helpfull. I will try it out. :) |
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Comment by Antoinettew
on April 06, 2009
Nice edges in a selection: always a tricky point for me. So thank you very much for this tip. I am certainly going to try this! |
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Comment by Starblue
on April 05, 2009
Thanks for so useful tip! It is excellent! I love "vertical" image above... so a nice landscape! |
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Comment by Marilyngould
on April 04, 2009
Great tip, fast, easy with great results! The image I used this method on is now waiting for approval. Many thanks! |
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Comment by Py2000
on April 03, 2009
Nice blog. Could be helpful in changing/darkening the sky... ;) |
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Comment by Marilyngould
on April 03, 2009
Wow, what a timely blog...I've been fighting with this very issue on an image. I'll give this method a try, thanks for sharing the tip! :) |
Comments (12) |
This article has been read 1719 times. 10 readers have found this article useful.
Photo credits: Lightart, Lightart. |
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