Hi Nancy,
Thanks for your detailed instructions on feathering. I tried it last night and had all sorts of trouble. As a newbie with PE2, I must be missing something obvious. Following your instructions, here is what I did. I wanted to feather an image on one layer in my collage.
1) I turned off the visibility of all layers, except the one I am interested in feathering. (The layer has a layer mask.) Aside from the image on that layer, the rest of the layer is transparent.
2) Your first instruction – ctrl/click mask: When I hit ctrl/click on the mask icon for that layer in the layers palette, everything in that layer is selected, including the transparent part of the layer. Then, if I try to use select>modify>expand, the expand choice is grayed out (no pixels to expand). So, I assume right from the get go, that I am not doing something properly. Instead, if I click on the image icon, just the image on that layer is selected. I left it that way (image selected).
3) Your instuction – select>modify>expand: With a selection ("marching ants") around my image, I chose select>modify>expand (by 30 pixels). What this did was to expand the selection area to include some of the transparency around the image. There is only one "marching ants" line and, as I just wrote, it includes a 30 pixel border of the transparent part of the layer around my image.
4) Your instruction: White showing as my foreground color – choose paint bucket and click within the modified selection area: If I then click within the transparent area within the selction line ("marching ants), nothing happens. Instead, if I then click within the image, the image is replaced by white.
At this point I am sure I am way off in terms of where I should be with your instructions. Sorry for my naivete about this, but before I go any further with your instructions and compound my errors even more, could you please tell me where I am going wrong.
Thanks again.
Richard
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