Expert: LizaL - 1/2/2007

Question
Hi, I'm new at Photoshop.  I hope you don't mind me asking you a question.  I'm using PS 6.0 on a PC. I would really like to know how to make a faded out border around a picture.  I'm sure it's really easy, but for some reason I can't figure it out.  I can do it on the Costco site when I'm printing pictures, but I'd like to do it on PS for the people I'm taking pictures for and making announcements and cards.  
Thank you,
Becca

Answer
Hi Becca,

I'm using a Mac and Photoshop CS, so what you'll see in the link below is a little different than what you'll actually do with Photoshop 6 -- but the principle is the same.

What you want to do is select the picture using one of the marquee tools -- and those are the top left tools in the tool palette. Typically, as a default the rectangular marquee tool is the one showing, but if you click on it and hold your mouse button, you'll see the other options underneath. For this example's sake, let's just use the rectangle.

Select the rectangular marquee tool and then go to the Select pulldown menu, and select the submenu Feather...  Enter a value here for the "softness," or faded value of the edges. I've entered 15, in the example. Then go back to the Select pulldown menu and choose Inverse. This reverses your selection so that you wind up selecting the *opposite* of what you've selected with the marquee tool. Now go to the Edit pulldown menu and choose Cut. This cuts your selected choice out of the picture. Go to the Image pulldown menu and select Trim, hit OK at the dialog box, and you'll have a cropped, feathered image.

Like this:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/feather.mov

This example shows me cropping a picture. If you want to feather the edges of a picture without actually cropping into it, you'd follow the same steps, only not crop into the middle of the picture like I did. In other words, follow the same steps but just select the entire picture, around its existing borders. But you'll wind up having to crop at least the edges in order to feather them.

Does this make sense? If not, or you have trouble understanding, please post back!

Hope this helps --

Lisa