Has anybody used the unfeather in X6

[dondean]

I was checking out the feather and unfeather optioins in PSP X6 and am a bit confused at what it does.

If I create a square marquee of 100 pixels by 100 pixels, with "no feathering" and set guides around it to define its borders, and then "feather" the area a certain amount like 10 pixels, it will feather 10 pix on the inside of the marquee and 10 pix on the outside of the marquee, giving you a total feather distance around the marquee of 20 pixels. You can verify this by looking at the area using "Edit Selection". Total area of the marquee is 100 + 10 + 10 = about 120 pixels in size. This is fine.

Then if I use the "unfeather" function, it will totally "unfeather the area no matter how I set the "Threshold" setting. If I set Threshold to 0, the unfeathered area takes on the total area that was bounded by the marquee when it was feathered, or about 120 pixels in size.

If I set the Threshold to something like 10, then the marquee decreases in size a little bit, to maybe something like 110 pixels overall, and the entire area (shown in the Edit Selection) is unfeathered. If I set the Threshold higher, pretty much the same thing happens.

Is this function working properly?
I would have expected the Threshold to have a more rational and proportional effect on the amount of unfeathering that takes place and on the final size of the marquee.

Any thoughts?

[Joelle]

Here is a link to the Help Files:

http://product.corel.com/help/PaintShop ... tions.html


Joëlle

[dondean]

Joelle, did you actually look at the "Help File" on unfeather
There is one thing I do not like about PSP and that is the Help Files. They are very brief, not very informative, and most of the time the only thing they tell you is "do this, do that, and click OK". Giving you no reason why you should "do this" or how "doing that" will affect your image.

Here's the total explanation from the "Help Files" on the "Unfeather" function:
1 Choose Selections Modify Unfeather.
2 Type a value in the Threshold control to specify the amount of feathering you want to remove.
3 Click OK.

This is intuitively obvious just by looking at the "Unfeather" pop-up window. This is not much "Help". I would expect more from Corel.

Don

[LeviFiction]

The problem is that Feather and Unfeather technically can't be based on the same thing. I'm sure they could come up with some method for it, but the actual methods of feathering and unfeathering a selection don't allow for it.

So, I think the best way I can describe it is like this: Feather is like blur <- not quite like any of the blur options we have but close enough. Unfeather is like using the Threshold command from the brightness and contrast menu.

Masks and Selections are essentially the same basic thing, they are a greyscale image where Black is deselected/invisible and white is selected/visible. It's all how it's interpreted. So when you apply a feather to a selection it just blurs the selection. You can't unblur something. So the closest they have is Threshold.

Threshold does not work anything like blur. Threshold is purely luminance based, and it's binary. After you use Threshold you are left with either white pixels, or black pixels. It's just a matter of where the cutoff point is for white vs black. And in a greyscale image you have a choice between 256 different shades of grey to choose from. That's why threshold in Unfeather has a range of 0-254. (I know the math doesn't work, but two small points won't kill most things).

The higher the threshold, the closer to white the cut off point is. So where threshold is concerned, the closes approximation to the original unfeathered selection is aright around 127-128. This assumes that the original edge is directly in the center of the blurring. As it will have equal mixtures of black and white creating a medium grey. By making this the cut off point, any greys 128 or greater are converted to pure white, and anything 127 or lower are converted to pure black.

Does this help? Or have I made it worse?

[dondean]

Thanks very much Levi.
Excellent answer.
I have viewed many of your PSP YouTube videos and they have been a tremendous help to me.
I have bookmarked several of them and plan on continuing to view them and learn more.

Does Corel pay you to do the PSP videos for them. If not, what is your occupation? Are you an instructor, artist, freelancer? Do you have a website?

If I may ask you one other question.
I know that after you create a selection marquee, you can right click on the selection area and move the marquee without affecting the image area.
I've been trying to scale a marquee after it has been created and this always results in a promoted selection that gets scaled, and not just the marquee.
Is it possible to scale only the marquee.

Thanks
Don

[photodrawken]

Is it possible to scale only the marquee.

From the main menu bar, use Selection...Edit Selection. Then use the Pick tool to scale, or shear, or ....

[dondean]

That's super Photodrawken. Thanks a bunch. Exactly what I was looking for.
How did you find out about this. Is it written somewhere, or did you just find it by experimentation.
I'd love to find out more (hidden) tips like this.

Don

[photodrawken]

How did you find out about this.

Not to belabor the point, but it's all in TFM....

[Radim]

How did you find out about this. Is it written somewhere, or did you just find it by experimentation.
I'd love to find out more (hidden) tips like this.
Don

In manual (at the end) - http://product.corel.com/help/PaintShop ... tions.html

Edit: strange enough it is not mentioned in PDF manual, only in HTML.

[dondean]

Thanks guys. Helpful info, although I don't know what TFM is.
Maybe I should, but it doesn't ring a bell.
Thanks Radim, I had seen that page of documentation, but had not gone all the way to the bottom of the page, so had missed the "Apply a tool or effect to the selection area" statement.

Don

[LeviFiction]

TFM <- I can only assume it means the "The **** Manual"

Most of my tutorials are based off of the manual, as well as books I've read. Sometimes you can manage to read what you need from the Google Books project. They scanned in a lot of books, while purposely removing large chunks so as not to violate fair-use law. So every now and again what you're looking for might be on one of the excluded pages, and what you're looking for might be one of the pages they've scanned in.

Google Books is meant to let you browse the book and decide if you'd like to buy. So if you find a book you think might be helpful

If you can get yourself a copy of the PaintShop Pro 9 manual, that thing was like 400 pages long. Most of it was just repeat information, but they did a lot of introduction and explaining. The current manual is meant to be minimalistic, but if you take your time and go through all of it, they often reveal many tips and tricks, and side-notes to help you.

And some of what you want to know might actually be found on the introduction page to the entire section and not necessarily on the page about the command you're looking at. So it's good to get a very general rounded knowledge of the program, and not just the command you're looking for at the time.

[photodrawken]

TFM <- I can only assume it means the "The **** Manual"

[dondean]

Thanks everyone for all your contributions, this has been very helpful.

Levi, do you have a website, or is the best place to follow your work on your YouTube channel.

[LeviFiction]

I was working on a website once, but I just don't have the time anymore. So technically Youtube is the best place to follow me. But I don't really do a lot there anymore either.