How to Feather Edges in Photoshop

An element of Photoshop used often by graphic designers is the feathering effect. This allows you to select the edges of an image and soften them with a hazy, blending-to-white effect. Feathering creates a very elegant look for a photo. It is often used in magazine layouts and other publications. The best thing about the feathering effect is that the process is fairly easy to pull off in Photoshop. These steps demonstrate the feathering effect in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. 

   Open Photoshop and the photo that will be feathered by holding down the "Ctrl" and "O" keys on the keyboard.

2. Select the Marquee Tool in the Photoshop tool bar. It is the first button in the top-left corner. If you hold the button down, other Marquee Tool shapes will appear. For now, choose the rectangular Marquee Tool. The word "Feather" appears along the top bar. Enter a feather radius number, which refers to the amount of pixels altered by the effect. The higher the number chosen, the larger the area that will be feathered. Alternative ways to get the feather-selection box are to go under the "Select" tab, then "Modify" and "Feather" or to hold down the "Alt," "Ctrl" and "D" keys on the keyboard. If these last two ways are used, follow step 3 before opening the feather-selection box.

3. 

   Draw a box slightly inside the edges of the photo. The higher the feather radius entered, the more curved the corners of the box drawn will be. A moving dashed line appears where the rectangular Marquee Tool line is drawn.

4. 

   Go to the "Select" tab at the top of Photoshop and click "Inverse." Or hold down the "Shift," "Ctrl" and "I" keys on the keyboard. This reverses what is selected by the box to include the outer edges of the photo not included in the initial box.

5. 

   Set the background color to white or whatever color is needed to create the desired effect. The two bigger boxes toward the bottom of the Photoshop tool bar are the color selections for the foreground and background colors. Hit "Delete" on the keyboard and the photo should now have a feathered effect around its edges. Continue hitting "Delete" to remove more and more of the outer edges of the photo until the desired feathered effect is reached. Most times, a graphic designer will continue until the outer edges of the photo are white. Click on the photo once to remove the dashed lines of the Marquee Tool.

6. 

   Use the elliptical Marquee Tool to create an oval or circular feather effect around photos. Create your own feathered designs around objects by using the Lasso Tool or Polygonal Lasso Tool (second tab down on the left column of the Photoshop tool bar). The Lasso Tool lets you draw your own shapes as the selected area. Use one of the Lasso Tools to draw a shape and continue on with step 2 in entering the feather radius. An example of a feathered freeform shape created with the Polygonal Lasso Tool is shown.

Tips & Warnings

• This feathering technique can also be used to feather the inside of a photo or background image for white space in the middle on which to place text or other images.