Rule of thumb for Feathering

[csadler]

I have heard tell that when feathering (a simple selection for example), the general rule of thumb is 1 px feather for every 100 dpi of resolution. Does anybody know different or better? I am interested in your thoughts.

Thank you

[Byron Gale]

csadler,

IMO...

Your own experience will be better than anyone else's rule of thumb. Go ahead and use the 1/100 rule you cite, above, but scrutinize it and decide if it looks good to you. If yes, great! If not, Undo and change it.

Before long, you will have a feel for how much feathering will look good TO YOU depending on the selection size and the image resolution.

Welcome to the Village!

Byron

[msbrad]

Welcome, I'm in agreement with Byron. How much I feather something depends on what I want it to look like.
m

[dj_paige]

I'll go even further ... any adjustments you make to a photo ought to depend on "what looks good to you".

You can have experts tell you the histogram ought to look like this, or you should never use more than X units in a particular editing function, and if it looks good, you are done. If it doesn't look good, you need to do more (if possible) until it looks good to you.

[Wendy]

Hi ..

Because feathering is such a hit and miss effect I never make a selection with a feather on it. I just do a plain selection and then apply a feather to the selection .. that way if its too much or too little I can simple use Undo and then try another feather size :)

Wendy

[TonyW]

If you have PSE6 or PSE7 (or CS3/CS4) you can use Refine Edges after making a selection. It lets you see (against a plain background) what the selection will look like and you can get adjust the feather to make it look just right. It's a feature I really like and use all the time.

Tony