Photo Edges Photoshop
Giulia Satmary
Here's an effect that I use quite often with my own photos to bring more attention to the main subject of an image or just to give photos a little more warmth and personality. Once you see how easy it is to create, I think you'll find yourself using it as much as I do.
We're going to learn how to darken or burn the edges of a photo, creating a vignette effect, and we're actually going to create the effect using a filter in Photoshop that was designed to remove such a "problem" from an image. In Photoshop CS2 (you'll need Photoshop CS2 or later to complete this tutorial), Adobe introduced us to the Lens Correction filter. This filter's main purpose is to help us remove common problems that can be created by camera lenses, such as barrel distortions, chromatic aberration and vignetting. It's a great addition to Photoshop's ever growing collection of photo editing tools, but there's no rule that says you have to use Photoshop the way the folks at Adobe intended. As we'll see, the same filter designed to remove dark edges from a photo also happens to be a great way to add them!
The first thing we need to do before we darken any edges is create a copy of our photo so that we don't damage our original pixel information. If we look in our Layers palette, we can see our photo sitting comfortably on the Background layer:
This brings up the rather massive Lens Correction dialog box which may look confusing if you've never used it before, but don't worry. For this effect, we only need to use a couple of the options found here.
The most prominent feature in the Lens Correction dialog box is the large preview area, and by default, it's covered in a grid. We don't need the grid to darken our photo edges, so let's turn it off. Look down at the very bottom of the dialog box and you'll see an option that says Show Grid with a checkbox beside it. Click inside the checkbox to turn the grid off:
Most of the options for the Lens Correction filter are found in a column along the right side of the dialog box, and if you look closely, you'll see that the options are divided into various groups. You can safely ignore most of the options found here because there's only two of them that we need for darkening the edges of our photo and both are found in the Vignette group. Normally, these two options are used to remove unwanted vignetting caused by a camera lens, but we're going to use them to darken the edges of our photo.
The first option we're interested in is the Amount slider, which will determine how dark the edges become. The further you drag the slider to the left, the darker the edges. You can keep an eye on the preview area as you drag the slider to set the desired darkening amount, but in this case, I'm going to drag the slider all the way to the left to apply the maximum amount of edge darkening. Don't worry if this seems too dark for now. We'll see how to reduce the effect at the end of the tutorial:
Directly below the Amount slider is the Midpoint slider. This slider determines how far the darkening effect will extend in towards the center of the image. Dragging the Midpoint slider all the way to the right will limit the darkening to just the corners of the photo, while dragging it all the way to the left will darken the entire image, although the center of the image will never appear as dark as the edges no matter how far you drag the slider. I want my edge darkening effect to extend a bit further in towards the firefighter's face so more of the background around him is darkened, so I'm going to drag my Midpoint slider a little to the left. You may or may not want to adjust this slider depending on your image:
When you're happy with the results, click OK in the top right corner of the dialog box to close out of it. Here's my image with the darkening effect now extending further in towards the center of my photo:
At this point, the effect is pretty much complete, but if you find that your edges are a little too dark, you can easily reduce the darkening amount simply by lowering the opacity of the layer. The layer Opacity option is located at the top of the Layers palette. By default, it's set to 100%. I'm going to lower mine to around 85% to lighten the effect just a little:
I'm creating a watercolor effect on a photo and I'm struggling to create textured edges around an image I have. What I'm trying to achieve is something similar to the image below. I know I have to create a mask of some sort, but not entirely sure how to create the texture so it looks like a natural watercolor painting. I have created the watercolor effect and the paper texture, I just need to create the textured edges. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
This was originally a Congress Library photo of an ex president. I trashed it for this demonstration by applying blue color, a fake paint filter and by messing manually the edges so that there's a good reason to insert a frame.
The granularity of the edges in shown method harmfully depends on the pixel dimensions of the image. You may need to make at first a smaller black area and then drag it bigger to get big enough teeth. Or you can paint the whole edge manually for big size features. Try the Smudge brush because it works to both directions. The edges in my 1st image were spoiled with the Smudge brush (the bottom and right edges got also blur).
It may be a good idea to replace the the bottom layer with something a little grey and to add some shadow effect to lift the frame separate from the image. But these were not asked, they depend on artistic decisions and are bad traps which easily make the image look overdone, so I skip them.
You will have an image as shown below, with a mask layer above your artwork. If your artwork is made up of many layers, group them all except the top layer you made. Click and drag the mask you made below your artwork layer or the artwork group.
Stop struggling with selections. Learn how to select and cut out anything from people, hair, trees, complex shapes and even transparency.
Discover how to get perfect edges, without halos and jaggies. Colin shows you exactly how in 18 lessons.
All the images are included for you to follow along.
You will be able to select and cut out anything: faster and cleaner.
Love your tutorials. However, when I wish to recall a forgotten suggestion that you made (e.g. selections other than made in this tutorial), I find it difficult to find on your website. Would it be possible to include a search tool on the site?
I am a PC user who recently retired after 30 years in federal and state crime labs. I started with Photoshop 4. Now that I am volunteering at a local history museum, I have found that I have had to learn the artistic and retouching side of Photoshop. Your tutorials and training DVDs have been a big help. We get a lot of old and damaged blueprints, maps, negatives and photographs that need to be enhanced and/or restored. Thank you for all you do for the profession.
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During the process of editing images in Photoshop, you've likely encountered this frustration to some extent: after performing tasks such as image cropping or photo composition, jagged edges often appear, resulting in a blurry and inconsistent appearance.
Let's upload the image onto Photoshop to achieve the smooth edge effect. Then, use the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl/Command + J" to duplicate the layer. From here on, all the design operations will be performed on this duplicated layer.
You can use any selection tool for this, but in this tutorial, we will use the Object Selection Tool. Click on the Object Selection Tool in the toolbar or press the "W" key on your keyboard. Then, simply click on the object in the image that you want to select.
The Object Selection Tool in Photoshop is smart and can recognize objects. All you need to do is use the tool to click on the object you want to have a smooth edge, and it will efficiently and intelligently handle the process for you.
This will smooth the edges of the object. In addition to the feathering option, you can also choose the "Smooth" option in the Modify menu; it can further smooth the edges. You can also combine the use of both tools for better results.
It also provides a real-time preview with a layer mask. As you change the values, it will show a live preview of how the object reflects in the image (assuming you have only the current layer visible).
If you want to smooth the edges further, you can apply a Gaussian Blur. Select your new layer, then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Adjust the radius until you're satisfied with the smoothness of the edges, then click OK.
The recommended value for Gaussian Blur in Photoshop depends on the specific image and the desired effect you want to achieve. It can vary based on factors such as image resolution, size, and the level of blurring needed.
Once you're familiar with the effects of smoothing and feathering in Photoshop at different parameters, you can streamline the process by creating actions with predefined settings to apply in most cases where you need smooth edges.
The process is simple. Just proceed with your normal workflow: open the Feather and Smooth panels in Photoshop, input your commonly used parameters, and then stop the action recording. To invoke this action, simply press the assigned shortcut.
Of course, you can make the process of smoothing edges in Photoshop even more enjoyable. Assign the shortcut of this action to TourBox, and with a press of a button on TourBox, you can quickly smooth the selection edges in Photoshop.
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