Edging / isolation help in formatting please?

[Tobyh]

I hope you understood my title

I'm after a little advice on the best way to naturally soften edges on images when using masks and trying to isolate part of the image. I have an example here -




I took me quite a while before the edges didn't look so sharp and ended up using gaussian blur, in Paint Shop Pro. I'm still not too happy with it tho, the edges don't look natural enough for me.

Anyone offer some advice for the best way of doing this, doesnt need to be specific as most use photoshop i'm sure but an idea of the type of thing you do would be excellent.

Thanks again !

TobyH

[Alan]

Hi Toby

I hope I’m reading you right!

Cant you just use a magic wand tool to select the dark area, feather the selection by a few pixels and blur the background until the flower edge softens?

Or select the edge of the flower with a magnetic lasso tool, feather the selection, inverse it, and do the same?

Or how about masking the area you want, and refine it by painting in/out areas of the mast, then converting the mask to a selection, feathering it and so on..

I use Photoshop by the way!

[Marvin Africa]

Paintshop Pro has a 'soften' tool that you can use to blend the edges.

[Tobyh]

Originally Posted by Marvin Africa

Paintshop Pro has a 'soften' tool that you can use to blend the edges.

Thanks for the replies all.

I hadn't found this last night, best I have another good look. I had been doing the selection / inverse then feathering technique also.