The Quick Refine Soft-Edge Mask Tip
Digitip 091 – Photoshop CS4 – Refining your Mask…
Modified: 13 September 2009 – Added “Note”.
Super quick tip. A practical example. I’ve been writing Technical Documentation the past weeks, and am processing an awful lot of screenshots. Sometimes they are kind of big and I really only want to focus on one part, but would love to see a fading edge and I crop the images so they don’t take up too much room. Photoshop CS4′s Mask panel helps be produce the desired effect.
Photoshop CS4 makes this a 3 second task… I’m not kidding ! Don’t blink, you might miss them.
Quick Steps 1-2-3
Create a Selection, with the Rectangle Marquee tool, roughly the size you want the final image to be.
Note: If you want to feather the bottom half of an entire screenshot, don’t select the entire canvas. Instead, just select an area that falls a few pixels within the canvas area at the feathering point.
Click Add Pixel Mask in Masks Panel.
Click Mask Edge… The Refine Edge dialog appears.
Play with Feather and Contract/Expand settings (and others if preferred) until you get the edge just right
Click OK
and you’re done.
Video Tutorial
[apologies, 2nd video upload... I goofed up on the first one...]
Topics: Adobe, Photoshop | 9 Comments »
August 20th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Cari,
I can’t get it to do only one edge in PS! I have used ID Directional Feather Effect for this recently but can’t get the control I get in PS.
August 20th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
OK, I just expanded the mask outside the edges and that handled that. Sheesh!
August 23rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
@Mark: if you take a look at the youtube video you’ll see that you can indeed have a soft edge on one side, using photoshop, but it takes this trick to make it work.
August 26th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Cari,
I’ve gone through the video several times and I duplicated exactly what you did on the video and I still get all four sides feathering, not just the bottom. I don’t know what I’m missing!
August 26th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
OK, I figured it out.
The reason I was getting the feather on each edge was that the screen shot was not properly trimmed! I had more image outside my cropped view, hence more image area to mask and the resulting feather on all sides. Once I trimmed it to size it worked just like your video, one edge feathered.
This is a caveat that should be noted.
September 11th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Hi, Cari, just discovered you and your site and will certainly be returning and returning! Great stuff!
I’m having the same problem with this tip as Mark did: All four sides are getting feathered. I don’t understand Mark’s reference to “properly trimmed.”
What am I missing?!
September 13th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
@Eddie: I’ll add an additional note in the tip, that clarifies a particular pitfall.
Say you want to feather just the bottom of an image.
When you create the selection, ensure you select an area just a tiny bit less deep than the entire canvas area (E.g. Edit > Select All won’t work).
After you’ve done that you can feather away nicely
Hope this helps.
August 23rd, 2010 at 12:45 am
Thank you for this! What an easy tip that ends up looking beautiful and professional.
August 25th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
@Shannon you’re most welcome!