If possible, can anyone help me with the "Feathering of a selected area". On a couple of my recent Stoat images, the white fur is a little blown, so after selecting and adjusting the exposure to compensate I then tried to feather the edges so the adjusted layer would blend in. But for some reason ( Me ) the edges are not blending together.
Any help with this would be appreciated, I'm using Photoshop CS2.
Andy...
Posted by David Sewell on July 1, 2011 at 12:20 PM
I don't know about CS2, Andy, but I'll explain how I deal with the same problem in PSE 9. Firstly I darken the image so that the fur (or whatever else is blown) has some detail in it. If working from RAW I do this by reducing the exposure a little and also by reducing the contrast. I then make a duplicate layer of the image, which I bring up to the exposure and levels required for the bulk of the image. I then use the eraser tool to remove the blown whites and reveal the darker, more detailed whites underneath. When I have got what I want I use the merge visible command to create the final image, and save.
Sounds like you're trying to feather after the adjustment - better to do it first! Select your lasso tool, in the feather box type in a fairly large radius (100-150px), then make your selection. Then copy the selection to a new layer (ctrl-J/cmd-J) and do whatever adjustments you want to that layer - use levels or curves to taste. You can then also use the opacity/blend mode on the new layer to further fine control the blend/feather if you want to.
You can easily turn the layer on/off to see the change/original and see how you're doing. BTW, Most people make the feather too small, so the graduation of the effect is too sharp - keep it large'ish.
Yes... select, feather to a fairly large radius (the size will be dependant on your image size), I think Nick may be a little generous here... to get an idea of what the feather radius is doing switch over to the mask view (a pair of icons at the bottom of the tool box) then copy to a new layer, make adjustments, here I would recommend changing the blend mode to luminosity so that you only effect the brightness/exposure without altering the colour...
try this Andy, should work in CS2 as well. In the channel panel ctrl+click the RGB channel, this selects the brighter half of the image. Clicking again with shift+ctrl+alt pressed will remove the the darker half of the election, do it again refines the selection further...the selection canbe used as a mask and as you are taking the brightness selection from the original image no feathering should be needed.
Discussion
5 repliesIf possible, can anyone help me with the "Feathering of a selected area". On a couple of my recent Stoat images, the white fur is a little blown, so after selecting and adjusting the exposure to compensate I then tried to feather the edges so the adjusted layer would blend in. But for some reason ( Me ) the edges are not blending together.
Any help with this would be appreciated, I'm using Photoshop CS2.
Andy...
Hope that is helpful.
David
You can easily turn the layer on/off to see the change/original and see how you're doing. BTW, Most people make the feather too small, so the graduation of the effect is too sharp - keep it large'ish.
HTH
Yes... select, feather to a fairly large radius (the size will be dependant on your image size), I think Nick may be a little generous here... to get an idea of what the feather radius is doing switch over to the mask view (a pair of icons at the bottom of the tool box) then copy to a new layer, make adjustments, here I would recommend changing the blend mode to luminosity so that you only effect the brightness/exposure without altering the colour...
HTH
Phil
Thanks for the advice guys, cheers
Andy...