Softening the edges of a selection

You can smooth the hard edges of a selection by anti-aliasing or feathering, or by using a soft-edged brush with the selection brush tool. Feathering lets you smooth an edge subtly with small transitions of just a few pixels or create more visible transitions up to 250 pixels wide.

Anti-aliasing

Smooths the jagged edges of a selection by softening the color transition between edge pixels and background pixels. Since only the edge pixels change, no detail is lost. Anti-aliasing is useful when cutting, copying, and pasting selections to create composite images.

In the options bar, you can select anti-aliasing for the lasso, polygonal lasso, magnetic lasso, elliptical marquee, and magic wand tools. To use anti-aliasing, you must select this option before using these tools; you cannot add anti-aliasing to an existing selection.

Feathering

Blurs edges by building a transition between the selection and surrounding pixels. This blurring can cause some loss of detail at the edge of the selection.

You can create a feathered selection with the elliptical marquee, rectangular marquee, lasso, polygonal lasso, or magnetic lasso tool. You can also add feathering to an existing selection by using the Select menu. Feathering effects are apparent when you move, cut, copy, or fill the selection.

To view the boundaries of an existing feathered selection, select the selection brush tool, and choose Mask in the options bar. Unselected areas display with a color overlay. See Using the Selection Brush tool.

To use anti-aliasing:

1. Select the lasso, polygonal lasso, magnetic lasso, elliptical marquee, or magic wand tool.
2. Select Anti-aliased in the options bar.
3. Make a selection in the image window.

To define a feathered edge for a selection tool:

1. Do one of the following:
• Select any of the lasso or marquee tools, and enter a Feather value from 1 to 250 pixels in the options bar. This value defines the width of the feathered edge.
• Select the selection brush tool, and select a soft-edged brush from the brushes popup palette in the options bar.
2. Make a selection in the image window.

To define a feathered edge for an existing selection:

1. Use a selection tool to make a selection.
2. Choose Select > Feather.
3. Enter a value between .2 and 250 in the Feather Radius text box, and click OK. The feather radius defines the width of the feathered edge.

Note: If you make a small selection with a large feather radius, Photoshop Elements displays the message "No pixels are more than 50% selected." If you click OK, Photoshop Elements creates a selection with invisible edges. To avoid this situation, either decrease the feather radius, or increase the selection's size.


Selections without and with feathering A. Selection with no feather, same selection filled with gray pattern B. Selection with feather, same selection filled with with gray pattern