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DPChallenge Forums >> Tips, Tricks, and Q&A >> Calling Photoshop Gurus
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 02/23/2004 06:06:57 PM · #1
This is not for a challenge.... but...

I have a photo, pasted onto (in a layer in Photoshop) a white canvas so that there is white space on the right of the photo (as if the border is wrong, and only on one side)....

Is there a way to blend the end of the photo into the white gradually...like a fade?

Thanks...

Message edited by author 2004-02-23 18:07:07.
 02/23/2004 06:10:03 PM · #2
this is generalE's area of expertise, i've seen a lot of his work with similar borders
 02/23/2004 06:15:17 PM · #3
least destructive way to do this is to use a layer mask, with a gradient fill in it.

Make a new mask layer for the picture you want to fade.
Use the gradient tool to create a light to dark transition on the _mask_
in the region you want to fade. If you press the shift key, you can create a 90 degree gradient so that it is even across the edge.

Use the levels command to adjust the amount of the fade. Center slider varies how fast the fade happens, end sliders vary where the fade begins and ends.
 02/23/2004 06:16:08 PM · #4
/me does one step at a time... :P

Okie.. lemme try it out
 02/23/2004 06:19:42 PM · #5
Quick and dirty method.

Hit 'Q' to enter Quick Mask mode. Select the gradient tool and look at the color selector in the tools menu make sure that black is your foreground color and white is your background color.

Now drag a gradient over the top of your image. When you're done the gradient should go from pink (or whatever color you've selected for masking) to transparent. The pink area is the "masked" area of your photo.

Hit 'Q' again to exit Quick Mask mode, that should leave you with a selection over a portion of your photo. Just hit 'Delete' now to clear the selected area.

It might take some practice to get it just right but it's a simple technique.

Message edited by author 2004-02-23 18:20:32.
 02/23/2004 06:27:35 PM · #6
The big advantage to working on a layer is that you can use levels to fine tune the fade and things like gaussian blur to expand or edit it - also with the mask you don't touch any of the original pixels, so its easy to go back and change things later.

Filtering masks is the single best photoshop tip I've ever picked up.
 02/23/2004 06:32:16 PM · #7
Gordon is definitely right about using masks. I just threw up the quick mask method as an alternative. I always use masks on large projects when I know I'm going to keep the PSD but when I'm just doing something quick I tend to go with the quick mask.

Quick masks are also a good way to extract someone or something from a photo to be used in another image.
 02/23/2004 06:38:04 PM · #8
Hi Karen,
Looks like you are getting plenty of good advice already but I'll throw out this bookmark for you to check out. Stick with it!
It only gets easier :)

//www.russellbrown.com/body.html

Click "More Tips" to get some great tutorials. You need quicktime to play them though.
 02/23/2004 07:22:06 PM · #9
Thanks for all the advice, and Gordon for spending time with me in the chat about this! It is coming along, and I will post an example when I am at least partially satisfied with it.

Cheers!
 02/23/2004 07:29:18 PM · #10
QuickMask is also a quick way to create a mask you then save "for later."

If you are going to get into any kind of masking I highly recommend a tablet/stylus combo -- even the smallest/cheapest will make a huge difference.
 02/23/2004 08:00:11 PM · #11
Originally posted by GeneralE:

If you are going to get into any kind of masking I highly recommend a tablet/stylus combo -- even the smallest/cheapest will make a huge difference.


I thought that for the longest time, then I got a bit further in to it and worked out I never need to accurately paint any masks. It is amazing what you can do once you realise that the channels in the image, masks and selections are all just greyscale images and can be moved back and forth between each 'view'

So you can use a channel to create a perfect mask for an image, then use filters to perfect it for what you need - levels and curves to change strength of the effect, gaussian blur and sharpen to move edges, levels again to fine tune edges even further.

My stylus gets used for clone/ healing type operations, but even there I'm working out how to do with out.

The secret I think is to learn how to do 'over the top' changes and then back them off subtly, rather than trying to get it perfect in one go - photoshop makes it ridiculously easy to do masks for digital photography without ever having to draw them or use lasso tools once you get the hang of it - and its a whole lot more precise when I let the image do it for me. (or maybe I'm just lazy - but its my kind of lazy)
 02/23/2004 09:12:39 PM · #12
Well, after all that, I think I did it too small (doh)...
but I think it will work for my purposes...just hope you can see it well enough. It is for my business card.



02/23/2004 09:19:07 PM · #13
Originally posted by KarenB:
Well, after all that, I think I did it too small (doh)...
but I think it will work for my purposes...just hope you can see it well enough. It is for my business card.



Nice.....I like it.
 02/23/2004 09:58:56 PM · #14
Thanks!
And thanks again for the help... I learned a new fun thing along the way! :)
 02/23/2004 10:36:27 PM · #15
where will they be printed?


02/23/2004 11:17:57 PM · #16
I do them myself on high gloss photo business cards by avery :)
I did one for my husband, and it has rec'd such good response, that it has actually generated some business for me ;)
 02/24/2004 12:23:42 AM · #17
Karen -- they look great, but you should get rid of the period after the word "contemporary" -- or add one to the other items in the list.

Gordon -- are you generating your mask by copying and adjusting one of the color channels? I still don't see how you get away from painting the mask if you want to isolate an element from a background which is at all similar in color/tone. But I'd still say that anything you end up doing with a brush-type tool is more effectively done with a stylus.
 02/24/2004 08:27:09 AM · #18
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Karen -- they look great, but you should get rid of the period after the word "contemporary" -- or add one to the other items in the list.
too hard to see here, but that is actually a comma - it prints better :)
 02/24/2004 09:39:44 AM · #19
Originally posted by GeneralE:
I still don't see how you get away from painting the mask if you want to isolate an element from a background which is at all similar in color/tone. .


This is true, however I very seldom find something that I'm trying to isolate in a picture that is not differentiated from its surroundings by either colour or tone (thought experiment - if its the same colour and tone, how can you tell its different - maybe texture ?)

My basic motivation is to let what is different about the thing I'm trying to select drive the selection. This might sound all newagey and spirital nonsense, but the idea is that if you want to select something, it must have some characteristic that differentiates it from the surrounding.

If you go look at each channel you'll probably find one which really highlights that difference due the large variation in tones in each colour channel. When you find that one, I Ctrl+click on that channel (which turns the channel in to an active selection) I then add an adjustment layer which turns that selection into a mask on that layer.

It is then relatively simple to further enhance that mask using all the standard tools (curves increasing the contrast and further extracting the object from the background, levels used to set hard end points, blur/ sharpen to soften/ harden the edges of the selection, brushes/ erase tool to do large scale tidy ups on the outlying areas, etc.

My general findings are that even though I have a reasonably good graphics tablet (graphire 2) that I can do much more accurate and adjustable work by not ever picking up the stylus. This has proven true for masking, spotting and basically everything I ever do to digital photographs. I still use my graphics tablet, I just find that there are much easier, quicker and more accurate ways to start than painting a quick mask. This is probably entirely different for non-photographic work, but I find my image has all the info I need for those selections and masks, without having to draw anything with any degree of accuracy.

The other useful technique I've found is being really heavy handed in applying some sort of effect/ mask etc, then backing it out using the opacity sliders - again easier for me than trying to get it just perfect, and much quicker.

Message edited by author 2004-02-24 09:42:17.
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