Photoshop Tips - How to soften the edges of cut and pastes Images

Basic Photoshop CS3 tips of the day


Softening the edges of cut & paste images

Cut-outs tend to look.... well.... cut out. The hard edges give it an unnatural look. You can give it a Gaussian blur but this tends to lose the sharpness of the detail.

A way around this is to make a mask of the cut-out layer (select the layer while holding down Cmnd or Ctrl) and, while the selection is still active, create a new temporary layer. While the temporary layer is selected, stroke the selection (Edit/Stroke) which will paint an outline of the selection. Deselect and make a new selection from the temporary layer with the outline.

This will create a selection of the outline only. Now you can delete the temporary layer and select the cut-out layer. Go to Filter/ Blur/ Gaussian blur and blur it just enough to soften the edges. The result is a cut-out that looks as if it belongs in its new backdrop. The sharpness of the image is not compromised and only the hard edges are blurred.


User Reactions:

thats a good technique but couldnt you select the cutout - contract (select > modify > contract) invert and the blur??

Er....... yeah.

The simple approach is always the last thing to occur to me (which, in this case, it didn't.... it occurred to you).

Good thinking.

Another idea, duplicate the layer; blur the bottum layer (it also creates a nice glow with high level of blur). This works well if the image is smaller.

If the image is large and people will see the detail; (tutorial from imagineFX) more time consuming. Change the opacity of the paint brush, sample the edge color, and paint an edge. Remeber low opacity.

Just a couple more techniques for the tool box.