p.1 #4 · Is there a way to soften edges in PS or LRC?
Before you add blur to the image, turn off any sharpening you are doing in the detail panel of LR or whatever raw processor you are using.
Lightroom also has a sharpness slider under local adjustments that goes to -100. The regular sharpness slider in the detail panel (global) has a minimum setting of 0.
p.1 #5 · Is there a way to soften edges in PS or LRC?
sbay wrote:
Before you add blur to the image, turn off any sharpening you are doing in the detail panel of LR or whatever raw processor you are using.
Lightroom also has a sharpness slider under local adjustments that goes to -100. The regular sharpness slider in the detail panel (global) has a minimum setting of 0.
Thank you. The sharpness slider might be an easy way to do what I am trying to accomplish. I am traveling right now and not in a situation to try it for the next few days. Can you describe what the overall effect of moving the slider to the minus zones would be on an image?
p.1 #6 · Is there a way to soften edges in PS or LRC?
chiron wrote:
Is there a way in Photoshop or in LRC to soften the edges of objects? I know I could turn clarity to a negative value. Is there anything else?
Adobe software’s ability to select objects (since you framed it that way) of all sorts in recent versions should also be useful here. One of the most useful (which I usually use in ACR) lets you. “paint” over things that you want to select, after which it tries (usually successfully) to select the object from your loosely painted selection. You can continue doing that to add more objects to the selection before applying various modifications to the group.
Of course, there is one complexity here than hasn't been addressed. It is possible to extract a single object from an image (as long as it isn't too obscured by other elements, etc.) and blur that object’s edges, but how that blur interacts with other existing elements in the scene can be a bit problematic. If that doesn't make sense, try it and you'll probably find out...
p.1 #8 · Is there a way to soften edges in PS or LRC?
I have no idea why you would want to decrease sharpness of your whole image when you want to blur only the edges of your subject.
This video shows excellent (more complex also) ways to blur object edges. It also shows how much more accurate Photoshop's 'Select Subject' is when you do it via the Cloud.