Feathering Selection Problem

BUB 209 wrote:

These are the steps I followed from a book of Photoshop tips – Make selection
Turn on quick mask
Select filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur
Select amount of blur
Turn off quick mask by pressing Q key

Everything goes right until I turn off quick mask, then the file just goes back to where it was before quick mask was turned on – can’t save the blur effect. Am I missing something?

Blurring the quick mask means you are blurring the selection. If you turn off quick mask again, you’ll end up with the same selection, but the egdes are blurred. Since Photoshop has no way of showing you how much or how little a selection is blurred (you’ll see the ‘marching ants’ no matter what) you won’t see a difference. But the difference is there.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

Everything goes right until I turn off quick mask, then the file just goes

back

to where it was before quick mask was turned on – can’t save the blur effect. Am I missing something?

Yes. You are missing the difference between blurring a SELECTION and blurring PIXELS.

When you blur a quick mask, you are not making the slightest change to even one single pixel in the image. Nothing in the picture changes. You are changing the SELECTION. Before you do the blur, the selection has hard edges. After you do the blur, the selection has soft edges.

Do this:

Open an image. Make a selection. Fill the selection with a solid color. Now undo the fill, blur the selection using quick mask, and when you exit quick mask, fill the selection with solid color. See the difference?

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

From: (BUB 209)

These are the steps I followed from a book of Photoshop tips – Make selection
Turn on quick mask
Select filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur
Select amount of blur
Turn off quick mask by pressing Q key

Everything goes right until I turn off quick mask, then the file just goes back
to where it was before quick mask was turned on – can’t save the blur effect. Am I missing something?

The ‘marching ants’ defining the selection show you the 50% spot in the black-white gradient if you saved the selection as a mask. The blur is there but the 50% point didn’t move so it just looks like nothing happened.

Subject: Re: Feathering Selection Problem
From: (Bill Hilton)

The ‘marching ants’ defining the selection show you the 50% spot in the black-white gradient if you saved the selection as a mask. The blur is there but the 50% point didn’t move so it just looks like nothing happened.

I guess what I don’t understand is how
to end up with a .jpg file of my rocking
chair in a blurred oval with a white
background that will blend into the
white background of my web page, using
the feather and/or gaussian blur option.
I did it with the blur tool, but the
feathering looks too "abrupt" and I feel
the results would be better if I could
use the other mentioned tools. If I
figure it out I will announce it here so
that no one else will have to waste
their time trying to explain it to me.
Thanks everyone!

Yay! Got my results by not using quick
mask at all. Photoshop 6 Killer Tips has
been a really useful book, but I was tearing
my hair out over "feathering selection
without the guessing game."
What I had to do was to select the oval
graphic of the rocking chair and use feather
selection at 60 per cent. Then just straight
to gaussian blur, and it worked on just
the part of the picture between the original
selection and the feathered selection.
To see the results, go to
http://www.edswoods.com

I guess what I don’t understand is how

to end up with a .jpg file of my rocking

chair in a blurred oval with a white

background that will blend into the

white background of my web page, using

the feather and/or gaussian blur option.

Easy.

Step 1: Make an oval selection.

Step 2: Feather the selection or use QuickMask and blur it. VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND: At this point, you have not changed ONE SINGLE PIXEL. Everything in your image is just as it was. You have changed the SELECTION. The selection is no longer a hard-edged oval. It is a soft-edged oval.

Step 3: Right now, you have the center oval selected. Use Select->Inverse. After Select->Inverse, you have the outside of the picture selected.

Step 4: Edit->Fill with White.

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

What is the difference, if any, between feathering a selection and applying Gaussian blur in Quick Mask?

In Quick Mask, how can I apply different degrees of feathering or blur to different sections of a selection?

Thanks.

Tacit wrote:

Everything goes right until I turn off quick mask, then the file just goes

back

to where it was before quick mask was turned on – can’t save the blur effect. Am I missing something?

Yes. You are missing the difference between blurring a SELECTION and blurring PIXELS.

When you blur a quick mask, you are not making the slightest change to even one single pixel in the image. Nothing in the picture changes. You are changing the SELECTION. Before you do the blur, the selection has hard edges. After you do the blur, the selection has soft edges.

Do this:

Open an image. Make a selection. Fill the selection with a solid color. Now undo the fill, blur the selection using quick mask, and when you exit quick mask, fill the selection with solid color. See the difference?
—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

What is the difference, if any, between feathering a selection and applying Gaussian blur in Quick Mask? >><BR><BR>

None.

In Quick Mask, how can I apply different degrees of feathering or blur to different sections of a selection?

Ah, now that’s easy.

Use the Lasso tool to select the part of the mask you want feathered, run a Gaussian Blur. Use the Lasso tool to select the part of the mask you want to have a different feather, run Gaussian Blur with a different setting.

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

Tacit wrote:

What is the difference, if any, between feathering a selection and applying Gaussian blur in Quick Mask? >><BR><BR>

None.

In Quick Mask, how can I apply different degrees of feathering or blur to different sections of a selection?

Ah, now that’s easy.

Use the Lasso tool to select the part of the mask you want feathered, run a Gaussian Blur. Use the Lasso tool to select the part of the mask you want to have a different feather, run Gaussian Blur with a different setting.

That sounds like selecting a selection? When Lassoing a section of a selection in this method, how accurate do you need to be? For example, I want to aggressively blur from point A to point B, and slightly blur from pint B to point C, where A, B and C are points along a selection border. When Lassoing section A-B, I assume that the lasso width should be bigger than the blur pixels? Thanks.

That sounds like selecting a selection?

Bingo.

Conceptually, one of the most difficult thing for a Photoshop user to undersand is that *a selection is a black and white image.*

When you use, say, the Marquee tool to make a selection, what are you doing? You are drawing a white rectangle on a black background. A selection is just a black and white picture. White means selected; black means not selected.

When you go into QuickMask mode, you are actually looking at, and manipulating, the black and white picture. Because a picture is a picture is a picture, and because a selection is really a picture, you can do anything to a selection that you can do to a picture. You can select it, run filters on it, paint it–anything.

When Lassoing a section of a
selection in this method, how accurate do you need to be?

How precise do you want your finished selection to be?

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html