Adjusting Anti-Aliasing Amounts?

RB
Posted By
Rick_Brown99
Nov 4, 2005
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684
Replies
11
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Closed
In the bitmap software I used for years, you could adjust the amount of anti-aliasing of a layer, both in how many pixels deep it went, and in how strong. You stick one in front of the other, and adjust it until the blending is the best.

How the heck to you do that in photoshop?

From what I’ve seen, the select/feather/anti-aliasing thing has no control for how deep and how strong.

Something to do with masks? Some extra step whenever you want to control the anti-aliasing of a layer you have to create a mask/layer?

Cookie cutting something out and mixing it with something else, needless to say, comes up all the time.

Thanks in advance.
Rick

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CN
Cybernetic Nomad
Nov 4, 2005
If I understand what you want correctly, select -> feather should do what you want.

Or you can go in Quickmask mode and apply a gaussian blur
RB
Rick_Brown99
Nov 4, 2005
Well, feather sorta does it, but all you can do is adjust how far in the anti-aliasing goes, you can’t adjust how strong it is. You still get a hard edge, it doesn’t smoothly feather out to pure transparancy.

I can’t seem to get the effect with quickmask and a guassian blur.

This drives me crazy. Cookie cutting something out and adjusting the anti-aliasing is so basic, surely there’s a way to do it in photoshop.

I’ve been doing this kind of thing for 20 years, and do millions of dollars of advertising graphic/year, and switched to photoshop a few years ago since it’s the standard. But to do this, I cookie cut it out in the old program, anti-alias it, and then save it as a photoshop file. It comes out perfect, and there’s just just a cookie cut out "layer" with the desired amount and strength of anti-aliasing.

Surely I’m not the first photoshop user that wanted to adjust the strength and amount of anti-aliasing of a cookie cut out "layer". Surely there’s a straightforward way to do it.
P
PeterK.
Nov 4, 2005
after going into quickmask and applying a blur (or applying a feather before going into quickmask), try adjusting the softness/hardness of the edge by using curves or levels.
RB
Rick_Brown99
Nov 4, 2005
Yeah, but curves or levels is going to affect the entire image isn’t it?

I’ve seen a thing where you select your desired area, invert it, then apply the feather and delete the selected area, but, for instance in the case of a rectangular photo where you want the feathered edge, you have to select inside of it, by hand and then throw away part of the outside of the photo, in addition to having to do the interior selection of it by guess and by golly.
P
PeterK.
Nov 4, 2005
no, apply the levels or curves in *quickmask mode*. There you can adjust the edge transition of your selection, then leave quickmask mode and cut out your image, (or better yet, apply an image mask)
RB
Rick_Brown99
Nov 4, 2005
When I go into "quick mask mode" and apply a blur, everything that is selected gets blurred. If I apply a level to that, everything that’s selected get’s affected by the level. I end up with a blurry, leveled selection.

Thanks, but I’m obviously missing something.
RB
Rick_Brown99
Nov 4, 2005
Ah, select the area of interest, but not selecting the entire image, (which is what I want in this case, so I select somewhat inside the edge of the image by guess and by golly), and then go into quick mask mode. Mess with the blur and levels by trial and error, not seeing the result, then go out of quick mask mode, invert the selection and delete it. If the blur and levels selection isn’t lucky, start over.

No way to anti-alias an entire rectangular image directly without selecting inside it, and no way to interactively see the effect until the whole process is done. If you don’t like the final effect, try again by trial and error.

Jeepers.

Does the image mask idea let me anti alias it interactively where I can see the result without starting over?
EZ
Earl_Zubkoff
Nov 4, 2005
Rick, I think what you want is a plain old layer mask. Use your favorite selection tool — feathered or not — for your "cookie cutting," then use the selection to create a layer mask rather than to delete anything. Now you have the flexibility to alter the mask as many times as you like and see the effects in real time.

You can blur the mask, touch it up by painting with black or white at varying percentages, stretch it, add to or subtract from it, harden or soften its edges overall or in any particular area. All while watching the result live. And because you’ve preserved all the image information in the masked layer, you can change your mind and restore hidden parts of it without starting from scratch. You never had so much power.

By the way, what’s the old application you’ve been using?
GM
Gary McMillan
Nov 6, 2005
While it is not the "ultimate" answer you are probably looking for, look at the "Matting" choices under the "Layers" menu. Defringe may assist you. Refer to Help for a more detailed description.
RB
Rick_Brown99
Nov 7, 2005
Thanks guys.

Perhaps the layer mask will work for this particular problem. It’s simple rectangular photos I want to all softly blend with the background the same way.

The program I used to use is Micrografx Picture Publisher/igrafx image or whatever it’s called lately. It was the first color bitmap program for the PC. Zsoft had the jump for a few months after they first created color bitmaps, but picture publisher was the only show in town for a while. I still use the vector program, Micrografx Designer occasionally when blueprint stuff comes up because it handles that better. (To get it into Illustrator the best you create a pdf with distiller and then open it with CS2.)

Micrografx had a monopoly for years, and developed that monopoly attitude. When competition showed up, they couldn’t adapt and now they are gone or close to it. You can have a library of cut out images and drop them in whereever, and adjust the anti-aliasing to make it work the best interactively. It’s such a common thing, you’d think Adobe would have an easy straightforward interactive way of doing it. If some competition shows up, and it doesn’t look likely soon, I suspect they will.
P
PeterK.
Nov 7, 2005
yes, what Earl said. Once you’ve added a mask to your layer and are out of quick mask mode, click on the mask and you can apply gaussian blur, levels, whatever to the mask layer and see the change happening to your image. No need to redo the effect and make a new mask. This sounds exactly like the effect you’re looking for.

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