Soft edges when masking with a curve by using the pen tool?

[user_0815]

Hi,

when using a curve to mask out an object, is there a way to get soft edges?

When I add a gaussian blur effect to the curve, it blurs everything inside the curve, not just the edges.

Is there any way to achieve this?

Thanks!

[thomaso]

How about changing the layer hierarchy?

 

[user_0815]

Thanks. This didn't work at first, because my curve didn't have a fill after creating it with the pen tool.. Previously I dragged the pixel layer on to the curve to get it clipped which doesn't require a fill.

 

However, this didn't get me to what I thought it would be. I'm actually trying to get the edges feathered to transparency. It should blend in to the background a little better than just a harsh edge. Currently it adds white blur from the edge instead of making the edge transparent what I mistakenly thought would happen.

Any Idea whether that is possible at all?

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, user_0815 said:

Currently it adds white blur from the edge instead of making the edge transparent

It makes the edge of the mask transparent (+ increases it by 50% of the used blur radius), thus it un-hides the according area of the image instead. I assume your (unmasked) image has white in this area. – I can't reproduce the white glow unless I use an image with a white background around the object.

[user_0815]

Yes that's it! It was shot on a white background. I totally had the wrong thought here. 

It looks like I'll have to turn the path in to a regular mask to get feathered edges... 

I tried to get around this step because there are still several photos to go.  
 

[Return]

Put the curve object in the mask position and alter the nodes to bring it more inward to adjust to its edges..
See crude example:
 

 

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, user_0815 said:

It looks like I'll have to turn the path in to a regular mask to get feathered edges... 

That wouldn't change this problem if you use the same blur|feather width.

But you could slightly reduce the size of the blurred vector shape because it gets increased by the blur effect.

If you assign a stroke to the curve object (that increases it, too if used as mask) you can adjust the masking size more precise (without the deviations when simply scaling the entire object). This requires to draw the mask not exactly on the edge but some pixels inside the masked motive.

And keep the blur value low, in your video ~2 px seem to be sufficient to avoid a hard cut-out edge.

[user_0815]

Drawing the mask 1 or 2 pixels inside the object works very nice for applying ~0.5 px blur. 0.2 px wold even be enough.

Adding a stroke to fine adjust the amount inset would be nice as fine adjustment. But the blur goes away as soon as I add a stroke. Same when I use a separate blur live filter to the curve instead of using the effects panel. The stroke doesn't get blurred. See video.

However, that's not critical to my work right now, I'm just wondering why.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, user_0815 said:

But the blur goes away as soon as I add a stroke.

This appears odd and should not occur like this, as it does not happen in V1 to me. Note in my example the visually large offset of curve, compensated by an accordingly large stroke width, while the Blur effect works the same. – Possibly a V2 user can give more hints …

EDIT: your video shows the stroke applied as a Layer Effect ("Umrandung"), this does not work to me either. (possibly it depends on the rendering order of the two effects, … or is a bug ?). – Apply the stroke in the Stroke Panel instead:

Edited July 19, 2023 by thomaso

[user_0815]

Ok, adding a stroke form the context toolbar works as expected and the blur remains. I hadn't tried that.

The way I did it before was adding the stroke from the "Layer Effects" panel (called QuickFX in V2). That doesn't work.

[thomaso]

5 minutes ago, user_0815 said:

The way I did it before was adding the stroke from the "Layer Effects" panel (called QuickFX in V2). That doesn't work.

Yes, I had noticed this after my post (and edited it). A test in V1 shows that the Layer Effect "Outline" (Umrandung) gets affected by a Blur Effect if the outline is set to "inside" but "outside" and "centred" do not work. – Well, for a masking curve "inside" does not help to increase the mask, so the Outline Effect is not useful there.

But I also noticed that a "Shadow Inside" layer effect does not respect an applied Outline Effect even if the outline is set to "inside" (and thus should/could get affected by an inner shadow). Different than I expected in the alternative workflow via the Stroke panel the options "Draw behind" / "Draw in front" do not matter for the Blur Layer Effect. So this is not the reason for the Inner Shadow not affecting the Outline Effect. – Could be worth a closer look in V2 … If you like create a separate thread for this V2 issue to get it discussed in detail, or logged as bug or improvement.