How to Feather an Image in PhotoShop Elements

It's so easy to feather an image in PhotoShop Elements even my cat Abby can do it. Come on, let's do it. Takes less than 3 minutes.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• PhotoShop Elements
• ( Comes free with some Epson printers. Otherwise it's very inexpensive, like less than a hundred dollars.)
• An image to work with!

1. Open Photo Shop Elements and then open your image file, usually a .jpg, .gif, .png

2. 
    
   Setting default color pickers in Photoshop Elements

   On the Tool Bar set the foreground and background colors to white (This determines the feather edge color. You could choose a different color)

3. 
    
   Placing a rectangle around image so you can feather it

   Using the rectangle tool on the toolbar, place a rectangle around the edge of your image. From the Select pull down menu select Feather. Type in a value of say, 40. You can experiment with this number later. The larger this number the larger the feathered edge.

4. 
    

   From the Edit pull down select Copy. From the File pull down select New from Clipboard. That's it. There's your image feathered. Don't forget to save it.

5. 
    
   PhotoShop Elements Feather dialog box

   The feather Dialog box. Set the value here. Too high a number will cause edge parts of the image to be transparent, so keep the number small unless you want that.

6. 
    
   Feathered Image

   The new, feathered image in front of the original image.

Tips & Warnings

• If during the feather process the "Feather" selection is grayed out, not selectable from the pulldown menu do this instead. Draw the rectangle around your original image as specified, and then choose EDIT_copy, the FILE,new_from_clipboard. Now you should be able to feather the image.
• Feathering your favorite images add another dimension to them and is a fun exercise. If you are allergic to fun DO NOT do this exercise.