PE2: Feathering in a collage?

[Kenneth Liffmann]

Richard,
I have PE v.1, however PE v.2 probably has this as well. Go to your palette well and drag out the effects palette.
In the drop down box select all and scroll to vignette, then apply to your active selection. This may serve your purpose without much fussing.
Ken

[Nancy S]

Richard,

Another thing you can try;

On a copy....

Click on a selection tool and see that there is no feather selected. You're finished with that tool, can pick up the innocuous magnifier for safety.
Ctrl/click on MASK, one layer at a time. The selection line will not be truly accurate as it will not select pixels less than 50% density. Select>modify>expand by some number of pixels (the number to produce a new line which will be the limits of visible image including new feathered edges) to increase what will be the area of image showing through. With white showing as your 'top' color at bottom of toolbox, choose the paintbucket from toolbox and click within the modified selection border. Try one of these;
* Select>feather (by a significant amount)
* Select>Inverse
* Hit Delete key Or--
* With new, expanded selection line active, on mask go Filter>Gaussian Blur, guage amount by preview window.
* This will only effect the edges of the image

I have made a collage by;

Have a layer with a mask, all white. On workarea, make unfeathered selection line around area I want to keep (a generous amount as this will include the feathered amount). Select>Inverse. Click on mask thumbnail, have black be top color in toolbox, fill with paintbucket. Select>Inverse,Select>feather,Select>Inverse, hit delete key.

[Nancy S]

Richard,

Forgot...

You can always fine tune your composite by clicking on a mask thumbnail and painting with either black or white with partial opacity. (the same as if you painted with a grey shade). I would use a very small opacity and gradually build up.

[Richard Hirschman]

Hi Ken,
Thanks for your response. Your suggestion would do the trick except for the following:
1) When I apply the vignette as you suggested using "vignette," from the "effects palette," I am then asked to flatten visible layers and discard hidden layers - not good for working on a collage.
2) I can't figure a way to control the amount of vignetting using this approach.
Nevertheless I do appreciate the suggestion. Perhaps you have some comments on how to get around these two problems. If so, it would be an easy technique for a collage.
Richard
<http://www.pbase.com/doowopper>

[Richard Hirschman]

Jane,
Thanks for your kind comments about my photos.
Richard
<http://www.pbase.com/doowopper>

[Kenneth Liffmann]

Richard,
This automated effect obviously does not allow you to control the degree of feathering. You could copy the flattened image to the clipboard and then paste it in to a new document. Seems like a long way to achieve a goal. I copied the following method from PC PHOTO, Sept. 2002:
1. Open in RGB mode
2. Select subject and some of the area around it with appropriate tool, eg oval , circle ...
3.With selection still activated, invert it - Select>inverse. This command will select everything around your subject in the area where your vignette will be created.
4.With selection still activated (but now inverted) feather it using Select>feather. Here you can control the amount of feathering.
5.Can get background of your choice with Edit>fill command.
6. Alternately, you can create a new layer(layer>new>layer), choose the color of your choice and fill it (Edit>fill), and reduce the opacity as desired.
7. Or, with the selection still active, you can copy (Edit>copy)
and paste( Edit>paste) into a new layer. Then you can modify with tools such as curves, levels, hue/saturation, etc. Layers gives you maximal control.
Hope that this helps.
Ken

[Jane Carter]

Hi Richard, The feathering tutorial was Nancy's, I too am still learning how to do a collage correctly, and I am very glad she and Ken put these instructions here.
Here is my third attempt,
<http://www.pbase.com/image/20101350>
and you can see, I haven't learned how to feather them right. But each try gets better,,,,,,, sure is fun! Lessons too.
Jane

[Nancy S]

Jane,

All you need to do is
* click on layer containing one of the images
* ctrl/click (or Mac equivalent, command?) to select small image on its own layer
* Select>feather (large amount probably, like 20 or so)
* Select>Inverse
* hit delete key on keyboard

[Jane Carter]

Hi Nancy, Must try that tomorrow!
Thanks, Jane

[Richard Hirschman]

Hi Nancy,
Thanks for your detailed instructions on feathering. I tried it last night and had all sorts of trouble. As a newbie with PE2, I must be missing something obvious. Following your instructions, here is what I did. I wanted to feather an image on one layer in my collage.
1) I turned off the visibility of all layers, except the one I am interested in feathering. (The layer has a layer mask.) Aside from the image on that layer, the rest of the layer is transparent.
2) Your first instruction - ctrl/click mask: When I hit ctrl/click on the mask icon for that layer in the layers palette, everything in that layer is selected, including the transparent part of the layer. Then, if I try to use select>modify>expand, the expand choice is grayed out (no pixels to expand). So, I assume right from the get go, that I am not doing something properly. Instead, if I click on the image icon, just the image on that layer is selected. I left it that way (image selected).
3) Your instuction - select>modify>expand: With a selection ("marching ants") around my image, I chose select>modify>expand (by 30 pixels). What this did was to expand the selection area to include some of the transparency around the image. There is only one "marching ants" line and, as I just wrote, it includes a 30 pixel border of the transparent part of the layer around my image.
4) Your instruction: White showing as my foreground color - choose paint bucket and click within the modified selection area: If I then click within the transparent area within the selction line ("marching ants), nothing happens. Instead, if I then click within the image, the image is replaced by white.
At this point I am sure I am way off in terms of where I should be with your instructions. Sorry for my naivete about this, but before I go any further with your instructions and compound my errors even more, could you please tell me where I am going wrong.
Thanks again.
Richard
<http://www.pbase.com/doowopper>

[Richard Hirschman]

Ray,
Thanks for checking out my photos and your words about them.
Richard

[Chuck Snyder]

Richard, have you achieved what you've been trying to get? If not, maybe we
can try some more...

Chuck

[Richard Hirschman]

Hi Chuck,
I finished one version of the collage ([url]http://www.pbase.com/image/20138604[/url]) but it does not have feathering. (That's me in the lower right corner of the collage.) In another post here, Nancy said she would get back to me on her instructions regarding feathering and I will try another version of the collage, with feathering, after I "hear" from her. Thanks for asking.
Richard
<http://www.pbase.com/doowopper>

[Chuck Snyder]

Richard, nice collage! Beautiful family, too!!

Remind me, please - are you wanting each one of the pictures to have a
'soft' border that sort of follows the contours of the people in each
picture? Trying to picture exactly what you're trying to accomplish...

To put a soft vignette around each of your images, I would do the following:

1. Put the images on individual layers and add a layer mask. Turn the
visibility off for all but the one you're working on.
2. For each image, use the Lasso tool or other selection tool to select the
portion of the image you want to show.
3. Go to Select, Feather and put in a value, say 30 pixels.
4. Do a Select, Inverse, which will select everything outside what you want
to show.
5. On the layers palette, click on the mask associated with the picture
you've selected; the symbol next to the eyeball will be a circle, not a
brush.
6. Do an Edit, Fill using Black - this will mask everything on the layer
except that which you want to see show through. It should now have that
nice feathered edge you're looking for
7. Repeat for each image
8. When you have them all vignetted, you can use the Move tool to place
them. Happily, with a layer mask, the mask follows the image (isn't quite
so easy with other kinds of mask!
9. If you want to overlap some of them, you may have to change their order
in the layer palette to get the one you want on top.

By the time I finish this, Nancy will probably be dropping in, but this is
my two cents on it!

:-)

Chuck

[Chuck Snyder]

Nancy, good explanation! However, I'm not sure I follow your comments about
my method; I was using layer masks, not selecting, feathering and cropping
the individual images....very similar to your method 2. Changing what was
cropped would be as simple as touching up or replacing the layer mask. Could
you elaborate on what you saw I was doing differently?

Thanks, Chuck

[Nancy S]

Chuck,

It's me....seems I haven't been functioning as well as usual lately...blame it on having a bad day. Just bare with me til the real Nancy returns please! :)

Nancy

[Nancy S]

<giggling> just couldn't resist teasing one of my favorite people :)

[Nancy S]

Chuck,

I looked into that new S. Kelby book, I believe it was you who recommended it...think it is worth the pricetag? (which was around 30-35 at Amazon) Looked at a few sample pages etc...interesting.

Nancy

[Chuck Snyder]

OK!!!! (chuckling....!)

[Chuck Snyder]

Nancy, I really like the book a lot. But I'm also a sucker for books, so I
need to make that disclaimer right away. Now if you lived a little closer
to civilization, you could pop down to Barnes&Noble, grab a latté at
Starbuck's, curl up in an easy chair and read the book for an hour or so -
then make a choice. However, being disadvantaged as you are, stuck out
there in the beautiful rolling hills of California, I guess you just have to
forego that adventure and ride a horse or take a nice hike or something like
that...and then decide whether to risk buying the book!

:-)

Chuck