The Photoshop® Elements 10 Book for Digital Photographers

Softening Those Harsh Edges

When you make an adjustment to a selected area in a photo, your adjustment stays completely inside the selected area. That’s great in many cases, but when you deselect, you’ll see a hard edge around the area you adjusted, making the change look fairly obvious. However, softening those hard edges (thereby “hiding your tracks”) is easy—here’s how:

Step One:

Let’s say you want to darken the area around the woman, so it looks almost like you shined a soft spot-light on her. Start by drawing an oval selection around her using the Elliptical Marquee tool (press M until you have it). Make the selection big enough so the woman and the surrounding area appear inside your selection. Now we’re going to darken the area around ...