Feathering a Mask
Targeted Adjustments in Adobe® Photoshop®
Lesson Info
Feathering a Mask
Feathering what we're going to do now is meticulously select all of the individual strings that are holding no we're not going to do that if you feel like you need to apply a targeted adjustment just for those strings you have got way too much time on your hands or you were way too optimistic or I want you to do all my editing work for me because that to me is just totally crazy so we're going talk about feathering and just with a very very basic example we'll see a more complicated example in just a moment I'm going to use a targeted adjustment based on a selection so I'm in this case just going to use the rectangular marquis tool not because I actually need to but just because it will provide a very simple example for us you see this hazy area up the top let's call that fifteen percent of the photo whatever that might be I want to maybe enhance contrast and make some adjustments to tone down the appearance of haze there once again selection add a layer mask we're at an adjustment the...
y or rather the mass comes along for the ride automatically there we go and I'm just going to darken pretty dramatically just so we can see an obvious effect for our purposes just for learning purposes and we have defined the area very precisely I want exactly this area to get the adjustment and I've applied my adjustment it's a little bit strong but it's not too terribly crazy except that's not the most subtle effect in the image I mean, I might as well just cropped the image along that line I have a very hard transition my selections generally have a very crisp edge, but I never bed their selections that's not true I do for this elections when I want to show you why I never feather selections, but I almost always want the effect of my layer mask to be feathered, so why didn't I feather the selection first? Wouldn't that have been much smarter? Sure, or if I was much smarter if I knew inherently for every image for every selection exactly how many pixels I need the feather that selection by feathering is just a gaussian blur. Exactly how many pixels do I need to blur that image by that layer mass by? I don't know sometimes it's three pixels sometimes it's ten pixels sometimes it's fifty pixels I can usually guess plus or minus twenty percent I just made that number up I thought my head the point is I don't know and I don't care to know I don't want to be bothered trying to I don't want to be the genius who can tell you exactly how many pixels the feather by I want to work based on my actual image so instead I'm working on that layer mask. You can see my layer mass with white at the top and black for most of the rest of the layer mask, I will switch to my mask properties remember density. We were just looking at density a few moments ago. Well, there we also have a feather control that's a blur control that is a gaussian blur control that is a feather, the selection control they're all the same thing except instead of guessing and going through a trial and error process to try to figure out the right amount of feathering aiken, just use this feather control slider and see the actual effect in the actual image while I'm working. So that's not enough feathering that's probably way too much feathering. Not even probably that absolutely is and, you know, somewhere in there ish is the right amount of veteran. Obviously this is still an exaggerated adjustment that I would want to find tune, but the point being is that I always almost always ninety nine percent of the time want tto have an effect of feathering for my layer mask, but I don't wanna have to guess how much feathering to apply to my selection, I just want to see based on the actual effect in the photo, all right, let's get a little bit more complicated. Yes, yes, when you're feathering, does it feather along all the edges of your selection? All the edges of this election will get feathered. Yes, except for the edge of the photo. So the edge of the photo is considered an edge, and it will be left alone. So it goes to black, all the way to the edge of white, all the way to the edge that will be left as it is. But all of those transition lines, all of them, will get blurred. Yes, ok, thanks.
Class Description
Targeted adjustments in Adobe® Photoshop® give you incredible power when editing photographs. Learn how they can quickly transform your images in Targeted Adjustments in Adobe® Photoshop® with Tim Grey.
Tim will help you truly understand the concepts and functionality behind layer masking. You’ll learn how you can apply adjustments to specific areas of a photo. Tim will demonstrate selection techniques, painting on layer masks, and using gradients. You’ll develop the skills you need to make impactful and efficient adjustments.
Software Used: Adobe Photoshop CC 2014.2.2
Lessons
1Intro to Targeted Adjustments 2Skipping the Mask: When Layer Masks are Not Required 3Subtle vs Accurate Adjustments 4Painting an Adjustment 5Dodging and Burning 6Evaluating Layer Masks 7Using Shades of Gray 8Mask Density and Layer Opacity 9Selective Adjustments 10Feathering a Mask 11Gradient Adjustment 12Refining a MaskReviews