Photoshop - Feather

[peavey123]

Hi Guys, I feel really dumb for asking this but A fellow graphic designer just called me asking if I knew how to "undo" the feather effect? I know you can just hit undo directly after adding the feather effect or go to your history and delete it there but he has gone a few steps ahead and I guess he doesn't want to lose the work he has already done. Any Ideas?

 

[GK]

Hi Guys, I feel really dumb for asking this but A fellow graphic designer just called me asking if I knew how to "undo" the feather effect? I know you can just hit undo directly after adding the feather effect or go to your history and delete it there but he has gone a few steps ahead and I guess he doesn't want to lose the work he has already done. Any Ideas?

Why can't he Save As as a copy of the document, undo the changes to get back before the feather effect in that one then drag the current one over. That way he doesn't have the feathering but has the current revisions. Next time tell him to take history snapshots...

 

[peavey123]

Ya Thats what I said to him...hehe

 

[AKWD]

He could always start working in Photoshop non-linear history mode. To get this:

1: Open PhotoShop
2: Find your History palette
3: Click the 'options' button in the palette (A picture of a down arrow and 3 horizontal lines)
4: Click History Options
5: Click on 'Allow Non-Linear History'
6: Check out the other options. I like to have the top three on (Auto First Snapshot, Auto New Snapshot on Save)
7: Click Okay
8: Start using!

One note; I do find that while in non-linear mode, sometimes Control-Z/Control-Y don't work for some reason. You can still use the menu or History palette when this happens though.

Takes a while to get your head around, but it can save your ass from hour(s) of redoing something because you thought you were smart and did a destructive change as opposed to non-destructive.

I would recommend running Smart Objects more often as well. While Photoshop still doesn't have this 100% flawless (Read: canvas size snaps right against the smarted-object and a bit awkward sometimes to work with), it again gives you another level of non-destructive control.

Also, if you're applying filters to items (and running in CS3), run them on Smart Objects for more non-destructive fun.

Finally, instead of doing adjustments on layers, create a new adjustment layer directly above the layer you want to apply it to, set it up, then hold down Alt and click the little line between the two layers (Links the adjustment to the layer below.) If you need to do an adjustment to a set of layers, group them into a Smart Layer.

Finally; Never crop or delete parts of an image; Always mask it!

Hope these tips help.

 

[Rooster]

The history palate will let him undo steps further back than the undo function will. Has he tried that? If he's gone past the number of steps he has his history palate set to then he's hooped.

 

[peavey123]

Thanks AKWD I didn't know about the non-linear history states that helps me even! and I think i figured out his problem. If you make a selection and go to "select" then "feather" it will apply the feather to that selection only. I think he was entering the amount of feather in his toolbar which seems to keep all following selections feathered until you actually manually reset the feather back to zero?