Quick Tip Tuesday – What Size is YOUR Feather?

It’s yearbook season in our house, and I work with the middle school students in our community helping them to put together their book with PSE.  They’re all quick learners, and since I’m getting them “clean and green” I’m trying to get them into some good work habits.   Here’s one that might keep you from making a terrible error (that no doubt you will only discover after printing!)

We all have occasion to use a feathered selection – most commonly in a vignette:
Many people will use the Marquee Tool to create the vignette (see our tutorial “3 Ways to Vignette a Photo here) and to get the soft edge on the vignette, they’ll set the feather in the Tool Options bar.

DON’T DO IT!!

Instead, right-click inside the selection, and choose Feather from the menu.  You’ll get a little dialog box where you can enter the feather value you want.

WHY? Because…

You’ll forget. Then you’ll be doing something else, and make a quick selection with your marquee tool, CTRL+C to copy, CTRL+V to paste – and voila!  A feathered selection where you didn’t want one!  The tragic part of this is when the feather is small and you don’t notice… until you get the print!

By using the right-click method, you eliminate that possibility.  You get in the habit of having to enter a value every time you want a feather, so you’re doing it thoughtfully.

Hope this saves you some heartache!  What little work habits do you use to keep yourself out of trouble?

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