Fixing Photoshop's Feather Command

There is a frustrating little glitch in the feather command in Photoshop CS3 that I want to convince Adobe to fix, and I need your help to do it. It’s going to take more than just me e-mailing Adobe to get it done.

I know, I know, it’s been months since CS3 came out, but my to-do list is pretty long, and I’m finally getting around to addressing this.

The problem lies in how the feather command deals with selections that go to the edge of an image.

In Photoshop CS2 and earlier (for as long as I can remember), if the edges of a image are selected, the feather command EXCLUDES the edges of the image.

But a change snuck in with Photoshop CS3. In CS3, if the edges of an image are selected, the feather command INCLUDES the edges of the image in the feather.

Here’s a simple side-by-side comparison that shows what I’m talking about.
I started by selecting the top half of the image with the rectangular marquee tool (tool feather set to zero).













I then chose the feather command and entered a radius of 20 pixels.

In CS2, this resulted in a mask that made a perfect approximation of a neutral density filter. The only place that was feathered was where the selection intersected the image. The edges of the image were left alone.












Photoshop CS2 20 Pixel Feather

In CS3 this is clearly not the case:













Photoshop CS3 20 Pixel Feather

Here you can see that instead of a nice mask that divides the image into two halves, I instead have a strange square/oval mask that feathers the corners and edges of the image, and would not give me the same effect as previous versions of photoshop did.

CS3 does not let me use the same tool to achieve the same effect as it did in previous versions, an effect that tens of thousands of hours of Photoshop use have ingrained into my brain, and that’s frustrating to me.

Are there workarounds? Yes, there are, but none of them are perfect, nor are they quick.

The new Refine Edges command lets me obtain the “Exclude Edges” effect most of the time, but there are still cases where it includes the edges. It’s also much more time consuming, as I have to enter in settings for five different controls instead of one. It’s not nearly as simple nor effective as the way the Feather command used to work. When you are using this tool a couple of hundred times in a day, it can be a real drag, and it violates one of my rules of photographic tools: A good tool should be so intuitive and automatic that you scarcely know you are using it, so that your expression is not hindered nor slowed. Refine edges does not meet that test to the same degree that the old feather command did.

You can also use the blur tool on a mask, but that does not have the same exact effect, takes several steps, and again, disregards thousands of hours of countless users getting in the habit of using the feather tool to do the job--and now being forced to change for no apparent reason.

What can be done about it?

Simple! We need to tell Adobe to change it back!

Go to http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

And cut and paste the following text:

Dear Adobe,

In Photoshop CS3 you made a change in the way the feather command deals with a selection when that selection includes the edges of a image. In CS2 and earlier, the feather command would not feather the edges, but in CS3 it does feather the edges, as explained at www.westcoastimaging.com/CS3.htm. This is not a beneficial change for photographers using the feather command as part of their dodging and burning techniques. Please make the feather command in CS3 work like it did in CS2 so the thousands of hours of muscle memory put into using this command are not thrown away.

If there is a reason that some users want the edges of an image feathered, please put that option in Refine Edges to “include” or “exclude” edges from the feather.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Then, e-mail this story to all of your photographer friends...post it on your blog...even put it on milk cartons...whatever will cause as many people as possible to contact Adobe asking for this fix.

This is a positive thing. Adobe wants our feedback, and wants to hear from photographers who use their products to make sure the products work the way we want them to. If we want Photoshop to work for us, we need to let Adobe know what we need.

The Feather tool worked fine for many years, so we just need Adobe to change it back. Thanks for taking the time to write Adobe on this issue, and if you are part of the Photoshop team, thanks for listening to our feedback.