Oval feathered cropping - how to and what for

Kathryn and Murphy.  Right - original.  Left - oval feathered crop.

Photoshop, Elements, and a few other pixel-editing applications allow you to feather a crop.  Well, that's all fine and dandy, but what is feathering and what is a crop?

Feathering involves producing a soft edge to an image.  The left image has hard, sharp edges.  Pixel density is the same throughout the photo, from corner to corner.  The right image has soft, gently reducing edges that fade to nothing.  This is called feathering, and it produces a photo with a dream-like quality that enhances overall appeal and removes background clutter.

Cropping is the term used to select only a part of the entire image.  Cropping often involves selecting dimension (length and width), and number of pixels (dpi, pixel density, and resolution are all related).  When cropping an image, I always consider the size I want and what the cropped image will be used for.  This allows me to figure out the overall size of the image, how many pixels or megapixels are needed.

A cropping tool will allow you to pick dimensions and pixel density, but it won't feather the image or produce an oval crop.  To do that, you need to use another tool.  This is where the elliptical marquee tool comes in handy.  The image below shows some basic information on both the cropping and the marquee tools.

There are various ways to obtain the circular feathered crop that you want, but here is a good way in general to do it.
  1. Open the image so you can see all of it.
  2. Click on the crop tool in the tool window.
  3. If you have preset values, click on the preset menu bar choice, otherwise put values in the horizontal, vertical, and DPI fields.
  4. Click at the top left corner of where you want to start cropping.
  5. Drag to the bottom right corner and then take your hand off the mouse.
  6. Press return (you may have to do so twice).
  7. You will now have cropped the original image to a rectangular format.
  8. Select the oval marquee tool (if it is not present, long click on the rectangular marquee tool and then select the oval tool from the resulting drop-down menu).
  9. Pick a value to feather.  Try using a number ranging from 2% of the vertical pixel count to 10% of the pixel count.  So, if the image has 800 vertical pixels, 2% would be 16 and 10% would be 80.
  10. Once the area is selected, press <control>C (copy) and then paste the copied image wherever you want it.  If you want to change something, return to the original image.  Press <control>Z (undo) 2 times and change the feather value and repeat steps 9 and 10.
  11. It will take some playing and getting used to, but eventually you will get it.
I use a process like this many times and have always been pleased with the results.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com


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