Fading Edges

J
Posted By
Jimmy
May 13, 2004
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268
Replies
1
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Closed
Hi all
I have been working with photoshop for a relatively small amount of time .. I have this project that was assigned to me that consists of a collage of pictures. My question is how do I get the edges of each individual picture to "fade in" to the white background. Each portion of picture was selected via the "Elliptical Marquee Tool", was feathered around 20 pixels and was then transferred to the new collage. The edges don’t fade gracefully into the background, the transition is rather abrupt. The pics are around 1024×768 pixels. Would a larger feather radius be the right way to go about it? All help appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Jim
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S
She
May 13, 2004
"Jimmy" wrote in message
Hi all
I have been working with photoshop for a relatively small amount of time . I have this project that was assigned to me that consists of a collage of pictures. My question is how do I get the edges of each individual picture to "fade in" to the white background. Each portion of picture was selected via the "Elliptical Marquee Tool", was feathered around 20 pixels and was then transferred to the new collage. The edges don’t fade gracefully into the background, the transition is rather abrupt. The pics are around 1024×768 pixels. Would a larger feather radius be the right way to go about it? All help appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Jim

Somebody posted a masking layer effect not too long ago that would probably do the trick for you. I saved it somewhere… Let me see if I can find it.

<snip>
"" 1) First set the picture (or plain page) you want as the final background as layer 1.
2) Open & copy the picture subject into a second layer (layer 2)
3) Scale the pic to fit the background. Turn the layer on/off to check.
4) With the top layer selected create a Layer Mask. You should get a white box in the layers palette next to layer 2. Click on this to select it. (the picture in the main screen should not change) Use the paint bucket tool to fill with black. This will hide the top image leaving you with the background (layer 1).
5) Make sure you have the mask selected and using the paintbrush colour white over where the picture is. This will reveal the top image. Don’t worry if you colour too much, you can switch to black and cover up the excess. Zoom in to correct any edges. A soft brush will give the feathering effect.
6) Select each layer and adjust hue/saturation/brightness etc or filter for a more realistic colour balance. Crop if necessary.

Note: Layer Masks. The Black part of the mask prevents that part of that layer being shown, thus revealing the layer(s) below. The white part of the mask allows that part of that layer to be shown. The benefit of this as opposed to cutting/cropping is that using masks retains all the original image detail until you flatten/merge the layers. So if you find you missed a body part or gained extra background when cutting, all you would have to do is go to the mask and colour black/white over the area to be adjusted until you are satisfied with the result. ""
</snip>

I tried it and it works well for what you are trying to do. I don’t recall who posted that awhile back. But I use it all the time now and I hope they stand up and take a bow. 😉

-She

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