posted
Ok, I consider myself pretty adept at Photoshop...but I have run into a problem....
I may have several layers in a file that extend beyond the "top" layer. I want to give the element in the top layer a "blurred out" edge...one that fades from really fuzzed out on the edge to gradually coming into perfect focus as you go inward on the image.
Feathering won't work. It distorts sharp corner.
I swear, I used to slect the image, contract it, select "inverse" and then using the right amount of slider control...applied the Gaussian Blur. It gave a gradated edge fade.
Now, for whatever reason, this technique gives a 100% blur effect from the outer edge of the image to the inner "selected" area of the contracted image...I don't know what has changed.
Any ideas? I have been posting in the Photoshop forum...but still haven't got a completely detailed step-by-step on how to achieve this.
Anybody "got game"?
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I'm sure you are on the right track... you mentioned feather & gaussian (sp) blur & I know those are the 2 things I remembered from doing this in the past, but I also remember that I was shooting in the dark trying to figure it out. I finally did, but how? I don't know At least I'm bumping this up for you.
Is feather specifically a treatment of a selection rather then a selected area of an image? I think it needs to be for this task. Maybe thats all it ever is
*edit* i found the one I did a few years back still on my server... are the corners still square enough?
[ September 15, 2003, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: Doug Allan ]
posted
Thanks Doug, and nice to chat with you again after a long hiatus.
You know, the "blur" tool does what I am looking at doing .... if you give it a "soft" brush and physically draw over the perimeter edge of the object you want to have a fuzzy edge. But, there is a way to do it by using a selection and a few steps...but I can't figure it out now.
A guy on the Photoshop Forum gave me a step-by-step, but I think he skipped a few things thinking that they were common knowledge, which for me it wasn't....so I wasn't able to get it to work like he did.
The thing a lot of experts forget is to include all the "baby steps" if you will, assuming that the person needs to know even the basics...that way...nothing is left to conjecture.
Anyway, thanks for bumping this post up and getting it noticed. Hope your past year has been successful.
P.S. Wild pattern there. What was the application for?
Todd
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Select your "in focus area" with an oval. Feather that selection with a large feather radius. THEN inverse the selection and blur.
I can think of other ways of doing it. Probably a bunch of them. You can create a new layer over the first one. Blur the bottom one, then select the top layer. Select the center section, feather as needed, inverse the selection, and then hit the delete button. The unblurred area will be on top, feathering out from the center to none, revealing the blurred layer underneath.
Mike Jackson
-------------------- Mike Jackson Golden Era Studios Jackson Hole, Wy www.goldenstudios.com/ Posts: 390 | From: PO Box 7850 | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
In the Actions menu there is one called "Vignette" that pretty much does what you want (if I understand it correctly). I used it to great advantage recently doing a "Lifestyle" montage for a builder's sales office.
-------------------- Fred Weiss Allied Computer Graphics, Inc. 4620 Lake Worth Road Lake Worth, FL 33463 561 649-6300 allcompu@allcompu.com Posts: 427 | From: Lake Worth, Florida | Registered: Feb 2003
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And I notice you have a fuzzy edge blur on those photos....
Here's how the Photoshop guru helped me tonight:
Create the shape in Photoshop.
Select the shape.
Add whatever fill/texture you want.
Select the shape.
Contract the shape 10 pixels.
Select "Layer>Add Layer Mask>Reveal All"
Go to "Filter > Blur > blur about 8 pixels."
He had me do 2 layer and didn't really explain why or what to do with the second blank layer that was below the first layer ... the first layer having the shape and all the above applied to it.
Anyway, it seemed to work.
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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Golden...couldn't get your first one to work...I ended up with a complete blur (as opposed to a gradual faded blur) between the outer edge of the image and the inner selection area.
I'll give your other selection and the other gentleman's a try.....just to see the different ways of achieving this...but the layer mask seems to be fairly easy.
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Select the "in focus area" with an oval. Feather that selection with a large feather radius (80 in the photo below). THEN inverse the selection and run gausian blur.
Todd, I blurred the outside of this photo as described above. If you only want to blur the outside edge of a photo, just make a rectangle a bit smaller than the entire photo, feather the selection, inverse the selection and blur.
Good luck, Mike Jackson
-------------------- Mike Jackson Golden Era Studios Jackson Hole, Wy www.goldenstudios.com/ Posts: 390 | From: PO Box 7850 | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I've done it a lot, and for emphasis, you can also desaturate the blurred bit (makes it grey), so that the focused bit is in colour, gradually going to grey fuzz. Mike Jackson's idea is the simplest, & the way we do it, BUT in order to get a good 'camera out of focus' effect, with a short depth of field, We go a bit further: 1. Click the selection tool and set the amount of feather pretty high (depends on the resolution of the pic), then select the piece to keep unchanged, then Ctrl-I (select Inverse), and apply Gaussian Blur- a little-only a little- and do a Ctrl-shift-U (desaturate). 2. Do a Ctrl-I to select the inverse (which becomes the original selection) and go to Select-Modify-Expand and let that enlarge the selection bu say 20 pixels, take the inverse (Ctrl-I), (to select the outside of the selection), and do Ctrl-F (which reapplies the last filter again- the Gaussian Blur). 3. For a bit more, you can Select the inverse (back to the prev. step), Select-Modify-Grow or expand to enlarge the selection some more, Select Inverse (to get the outside bit again) and Ctrl-F to reapply the Gaussian Blur filter. 4. Ctrl-D to deselect the selection. This will give you a gradual alteration of focus away from the subject. 5. You can use a lasso tool rather than the square or oval selection, or whatever tool combination best encompases the area you want to retain. If it's just a rectangular selection, you can sometimes more quickly just redrag the new selection to a wider area, but with a complex selection, say a house, or animals or people, where you spent a bit of time making the selection, then the select-modify- expand can be quicker and more consistant if you do it in say 3 or 4 occasions. The amount you expand it by needs to be something similar to or a little more than the feather radius which you set your selection tool/s with at the start.
What version of Photoshop are you using?
I find that no photo is safe after you get used to this technique- everything has some point to emaphasise, so why not de-emphasise the rest by a gradual blur as you leave the subject! Good luck!
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7016 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
Another way just occurred to me after rereading your post and 'guru's' answer. At first I couldn't see why you needed 2 layers. Still can't.
1. Make the layer you want, the active layer (blue, in the layers pallette) Click back on your picture somewhere. Press the letter D ( to make black the default foreground colour) 2. Click the layer mask icon (a circle in a box at the bottom of the layers pallette). 3. Make sure the layer mask is 'active' i.e. that it has a white outline around the layer-mask symbol on the layer you're working on, in the layers pallette. (sound like mumbo jumbo?!) If it's not 'active', click the layer-mask pic. 4. Select a paintbrush- and with airbrush settings and paint a black fuzzy square outline where you want to fade the subject. Alternately, make a circular selection, and fill it with a radial blur gradient from white (centre) to black (outside) (with the gradient tool beside the paint bucket) 5. This will fade your picture out. If you have a layer underneath, it will show through where you painted the layer-mask black, and the white areas will show the original layer picture. The grey bits will be the fade. 6. I suppose you could also duplicate the layer first, and just gaussian blurr the bottom layer totally, then do this gradient layer-mask to the top layer. 7. If you want to apply the effect to several layers, but not all layers, make the ones you want unchanged, invisible (by turning off the eye icon in the layers pallette) and do a Ctrl-E (to merge all the visible layers) then work on them. Later turn the 'off' layers back on.
I probably oversimplified or overexplained these steps for you- but there may be others newer to Photoshop who'd like to try the effect, so I hope it's clear enough for a non-expert to follow!
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7016 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
Ian, The example I gave was the most direct way I know of, but as I stated in my first post, I could think of quite a few other ways. Quick Mask, a Layer Mask, or an Adjustment Layer all come to mind, too.
An adjustment layer will preserve the original photo in case you change your mind. If you want to do it manually, as I explained, I like to create a second layer on top. Besides the possibility of deleting the layer if not satisfied, the option to change the blending mode to hard light, multiply, soft light, or screen gives you a bunch of extra options....not to mention the option to change the transparency of the top layer to give you multiple choices.
I have also been eyeing a new Photoshop filter. I think it is called VariFocus. It is the one used on a lot of the Disney animated movies. I believe it would do this process with very little effort, too.
Mike Jackson
-------------------- Mike Jackson Golden Era Studios Jackson Hole, Wy www.goldenstudios.com/ Posts: 390 | From: PO Box 7850 | Registered: Nov 1998
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Mike, you're right- and the adjustment layers are valuable insurance, as is the History pallette if there's enough room! I'll try and upload two pix to show Todd the desaturating effect. They're not exciting- the local school wanted pix of some items funded by the P&C. From memory, I selected most of the pic, inverted it with a fairly high feather set, deleted that, and then selected the oven, inverted it with almost no feather to the selection, applied gaussian blurr & desaturate, and as mentioned, increased the selection size, and blurred it a bit more etc. Lets see if the pix land here first!
The idea was to emphasise the oven, and de-emphasise the background. Best wishes.
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7016 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
Dang...you guys are awesome! I'm using PS version 6.
I'm going to try your suggestions guys, just to see how it works in the ways you have outlined. It may take me a couple days to get to it. And if you don't mind...if I get stuck, would you object to me calling you up for some details?
I haven't worked with "adjustment" layers, or even "masks". I think I have used "masks" in my own way in that I inverse selections a lot to get to where I'm going. But maybe I'm taking the hard way around.
I really need to familiarize myself with quickmask, layer masks, and adjustment layers as I'm weak in knowledge there. I don't quite "get them"....but then I haven't really studied their significance and workings either.
Thanks guys. I should have come here first for answers....I didn't realize Letterheads were so into Photoshop.
Todd
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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Dang...you guys are awesome! I'm using PS version 6.
I'm going to try your suggestions guys, just to see how it works in the ways you have outlined. It may take me a couple days to get to it. And if you don't mind...if I get stuck, would you object to me calling you up for some details?
I haven't worked with "adjustment" layers, or even "masks". I think I have used "masks" in my own way in that I inverse selections a lot to get to where I'm going. But maybe I'm taking the hard way around.
I really need to familiarize myself with quickmask, layer masks, and adjustment layers as I'm weak in knowledge there. I don't quite "get them"....but then I haven't really studied their significance and workings either.
Thanks guys. I should have come here first for answers....I didn't realize Letterheads were so into Photoshop.
Oh, Mike....I was looking for just a quick "fade out fuzz to 0%" on the very edge of the photo...where the edge completely blurs out so that there is no distinct "edge" showing.
I actually have Vari Focus...and it is so-so. I admitedly have to play with it some more...but a lot of these 3rd party plug ins (like Varifocus) don't give you a large enough preview to see what you're actually doing...or if you can enlarge them-the preview image degrades so that you can't be totally sure of your outcome once you engage the filter...until after the filter does it's job.
Ian - your photo is basically what I was after..maybe with a little less edge showing, or more of a blur out edge.
Thanks for the advice guys....I'll get back when I have a chance to go through your tutorials.
Todd
-------------------- Todd Gill Outside The Lines Potterville, MI Posts: 7792 | From: Potterville, MI | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Todd, The photos below were done exactly the same way as I described earlier, except I hit the Delete key instead of the blur filter. I am also pretty sure there is a filter in Eye Candy that does it, but I have never needed to use it.
Here it is again: Select the area you want to keep, feather the selection, inverse the selection, delete.
Mike Jackson
-------------------- Mike Jackson Golden Era Studios Jackson Hole, Wy www.goldenstudios.com/ Posts: 390 | From: PO Box 7850 | Registered: Nov 1998
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![[Dunno]](graemlins/dunno.gif)
are the corners still square enough?
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