In these times, it may not make much sense to talk about how to blur the edge of a selection. Many of us already handle the luminosity masks or directly work with Capture One and its infinite possibilities … But it turns out that most photographers continue to make the selections by hand and then go to Gaussian Blur. Today we are going to discover that Fade is one of the best inventions of Adobe Photoshop.
The most common workflow with Adobe Photoshop is to develop the photo in Adobe Camera RAW and then zone it with the help of the selection tools. That is, select with Ribbon, choose an adjustment layer and blur the layer mask until its presence is not noticeable.
If we don’t do it right we will have halos, obvious changes in brightness and saturation and the feeling that doing these things with Adobe Photoshop is not right … But if we have a series of precautions the result will be good in most cases.
After a while I have managed to unmask the mystery of Dispel, that tool hidden in the window Properties (edit) of the masks (you just have to click on the mask and you will see it in that window).
The truth is that I have not found much information on the networks. In most cases they talk about her in passing and do not describe her virtues. In fact I have only used it in very specific situations. More I have already discovered its full potential.
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Fade, the secret tool of layer masks
Most of us, who were trained with the first book by José María Mellado to move from the chemical world to the digital world, remain faithful to the Gaussian blur. To avoid the appearance of halos as much as possible, we have to remember these three things:
Select always making mistakes inward.
Don’t make extreme adjustments to the layers.
Correct possible faults with the tool Brush with a Opacity come down and a Hardness gentle.
But, as it is not the same to select the edge of the sea than a forest of winter trees, it is almost certain that we are going to run into problems. Best of all, they are the same ones we had in the chemical laboratory and some of these flaws are considered aesthetic.
But there is another tool like the Gaussian Blur, with extra virtues. Is named Dispel and we found her in the window Properties (edit), Like we have already said.
In the window Properties (edit) becomes a non-destructive tool to blur the edge of the selection and live on top. Something that is impossible to do if we apply it from the menu Select> Modify> Fade.
The problem is the translation. Dispel appears in many windows, but it does not always fulfill the same function or have the same name. In the original language it appears as Feather (Feather). In Spanish they call it Dispel, Smooth… and with different missions.
Let’s see how it works in the window that we have discussed:
We make a selection.
We apply the adjustment we need.
To blur the edge of the selection we do click on the layer mask. This is how your window opens Properties (edit) and click on Dispel.
The effect of the feathering is seen live, as is the case with the Gaussian Blur filter. The result varies depending on the resolution of the image and the size of the selection..
And best of all for last. If we have to modify the mask with the tool Brush, it will behave with the same fading, so we will not have to adjust its Hardness, as with Gaussian blur.
To finish, let’s remember that it is a non-destructive tool, that is, we can return to them as many times as we need to adjust it as many times as necessary.
For these reasons it seems that sometimes it does not respond as it should. It’s just a matter of looking at it and taking advantage of its full potential. The access is more direct than the classic blur, and it has more functions. Are you going to change?