Feathering Doesn’t Complete Transitional Boundaries

HS
Posted By
Henry_Stock
Nov 30, 2006
Views
241
Replies
3
Status
Closed
I was trying to work through a training exercise in Adobe Photoshop CS One on One where I was using the Marquee Tools to select part of one image and to merge it with a second image.

The instruction talked about setting a large feather radius, 120 pixels in the sample. But the image that I got from the exercise was not anywhere near the image in the book. Specifically the blending of the two images was not very good. I could easily see the sharp border of the new layer. I tried increasing the feather radius to even larget sizes, but that didn’t work.

I tried to alter the opacity of the top layer, but that brought out images from the underlying layer that I did not want to see.

So my question is how do I increase the transition rate from one layer to the other so that the demarcation line between the separate layers is not as visible?

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M
Mousewrites
Nov 30, 2006
Did you try using a smaller feather?

A feather is a range of selection, from fully selected to not selected at all. A feather of 120 px means that it will go from fully selected to not selected in 120 px… and if the edge of your image is less than 120 px away from the fully selected part, you’ll SEE the edge.
HS
Henry_Stock
Nov 30, 2006
Yes I did. That didn’t really change anything either. However I now have something new to report. I tried this again from scratch, e.g. from a cold start I opened the images and followed the guidelines.

The first few times I did this, the images looked more like the sample in the book. After about five repetitions the results got worse again. That makes me think it might have something to do with cached memory of something else.

My process was to go through the operation and then to Edit/Undo it, then to repeat. By exiting Photoshop and restarting, I was able to correct the problem. So the problem isn’t so much the feathering,but something that happens to Photoshop as you repeat certain kinds of operations. I am running Windows XP SP2 with 2GB memory and a Pentium IV processor.
GA
George_Austin
Dec 1, 2006
Henry,

For some reason, you must not have feathered the rectangular selection. A 120-pixel feather radius on a 300 ppi image should be ample to blur the demarcation. And BTW, "A feather of 120 px means that it will go from fully selected to not selected in 120 px" is incorrect. It takes 2.7 feather radii inward from the selection edge to reach 100% opacity and another 2.7 feather radii outward to reach zero opacity on an exponential S curve passing through 50% opacity at the selection edge—a total of 5.4 radii in the tapered feathered zone.

George

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