mchivers

i'm trying without success to fade the edge of some photo's.I need to reduce the opacity of about 2cm all the way around a photo.

thanks in advance
martin

p?tr?

You can ctrl+click on the layer thumbnail to select the border. Then go to select > modify > feather and you'll need to set the size depending on your resolution. 2cm is about 3/4 in. so if your doc is at 300 res, then you would feather about 225 px.

Klaatu Baradda Nikto

Greetings martin,
If we understand you correctly, you want the edges to "fade" or transition in opacity 2 cm around the image, is this correct? (In other words, a vignette).

Generally, there are several ways to achieve this. Some fall in the category of being destructive (meaning they erase pixels) which limits your ability to go back and modify them. Other methods fall into the category of non-destructive (meaning that you can go back and edit or modify the result as often as you like) which can sometimes take a little more initial effort but the long term results are far more satisfying.

Here's a look at one way of each method:

DESTRUCTIVE METHOD
1) Turn your Background layer into a normal layer by double clicking on it and pressing Okay in the Layer 0 dialog.
2) Press cmd/cntrl while clicking on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette. This will give you a new blank layer below the current layer. Now, fill it with whatever color you want your background to be (this could also be another image).
3) Select the top layer then Select All (cmd/cntrl+a) and go to Select>Modify>Transform Selection. Control+click (Mac) or Right+click (PC) the Height & Width boxes in the Options Bar to set the units to cm in the pop-up menu. Then adjust their size by subtracting 2 cm from each dimension and hit Enter (twice) or click on the check mark to accept the transformation.
4) Now, go to Select>Feather... and play with the amount that will be your transitional fade of the edges. Around 10 pix for a 72 dpi should be a good starting place.
5) Inverse the selection (cmd/cntrl+shift+i) then press the Delete key and then deselect (cmd/cntrl+d).

NON-DESTRUCTIVE METHOD
1) Do steps 1 - 4 above.
2) For the last step simply click on the Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers Palette. This will leave your original image untouched and allow you to go back and edit the mask(frame) later if you need to. Remember that when painting on a mask, black hides the image and white reveals it. If you don't like the border you've created, simply fill the mask with black and start with your selection/feather again.

On the other hand, if what you wanted is a non-gradient (solid) transition as a border at a reduced opacity then simply don't use the Feather... command in either method above. After you create your Layer Mask, select it (cmd/cntrl+click the mask itself) and Inverse it. Then fill it with a gray. The darker the gray, the lower the opacity.

There are certainly much better ways to do this last part (like being able to use the opacity slider to control the frame's opacity), but, for the sake of brevity (yeah, this is brief), until we know better what you need, this should suffice.

Welles

Hey Klaatu! It's nice your space ship dropped in for a visit again! 8))

mchivers

sorry about the confusing explanation.i just want the outer 2cm at a lower opacity.

Klaatu Baradda Nikto

Martin,
Perhaps if you could upload an example of what you mean it would be easier to suggests methods to achieve your goals.

Hey Welles,
We're always hanging around (we check in regularly to peek at the boards) but don't always have time to post as often as we'd like. Gort misses your old avi. He was still going to have it welded to his metal cranium. However, that is not meant to diminish from this one. It's rather noble.

p?tr?

Try this. Select your photo then contract the selection to the size you want. Then press ctrl+shift+i to inverse selection. Right click and select 'via layer cut' now you have the outer edge on a seperate layer. Then you can just turn the opacity down on that layer. Is that what you mean? \:]

Welles

Good thought, p?tr??k. I think that's the most likely remaining interpretation of the original question. [righton]

Klaatu Baradda Nikto

Still Quirky After All These Years

Hi p?tr??k,

This method would be so much simpler (wouldn't it) if you could actually Contract a selection after a Select All command (or from selecting the entire photo with the Marquee or Lasso tools). Unfortunately, you can't. The only Select>Modify command available is Border.

The main problem with using the Border command is that it actually creates a feathered selection (which you will see once you fill or delete it). It's not even a true feathered selection either. It's more of a diamond gradient and not exactly a highly sought-after effect. This is definitely one of those things our loving Adobe should have fixed a long time ago.

Nevertheless, a great "work-around" is to go ahead and choose Border and give it 1 pixel border (this will reduce the amount of feathering to "almost zero") and then use the Expand commad to bring the border in to the size you want. Since Border creates a border selection around the image, you have to expand (not contract) the selection to make the border "wider."

Another little caveat here is that the Contract or Expand commands are pixel-ONLY-units. This means you will have to do some pre-calculation based on your dpi to know how many pixels (of your image) make up a centimeter (for 72 dpi it's 28 pixels or 57 for 2 cm). This is why, in the methods we outlined above, we used the Transform Selection... option as it allows you to change the units (on the fly) and make your calculation through simple subtraction.

Once you know how many centimeters wide or high your image is, you can subtract 4 cm to bring each side of your selection in by half that amount (2 cm). Simple (sort of). And best of all, any of these methods can be turned into an Action which would be very useful for batch processing or trying to process multiple images.

As we said, there are some better methods for creating a simple "solid" border around an image using a "non-destructive" approach. However, we will wait for Martin to post a sample of what he means before going into these.

BTW, Via Layer Cut is a very nice and quick approach to the destructive method. Nice one! :}

mchivers

thanks guys.
two days of trial and error(lots of error) and its as simple as that.
knowledge is all powerful.

thanks again
martin