Soften edges of adjoining rectangles

[dhb]

Hi,

Hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction on this one. 

I have 2 rectangles, both with an image texture assigned, and I'd like the edge between them to be less noticeable.  In this case to create the effect of a concrete room.  However, I can't seem to find a way to do this.  I tried adding inner glows, outer shadows etc, but can't soften the sharp line.  See images attached. 

Any pointers would be welcome,

Regards, Dan

SHARP_EDGE_QUESTION.afdesign

[Alex_M]

The only thing that pops up in my mind is to remove the concrete images from the rectangles, add a Gaussian Blur filter to the rectangles to soften their edges, rasterize the rectangles, and then bring back the concrete images.

[John Rostron]

As far as I can see, the rectangles themselves do not have any visible component, so you would need to blur the fills. Would you be able to blur the bottom edge of the top concrete image and the top edge of the bottom fill. It is difficult to be precise without knowing the details of the various objects.

John

[carl123]

If you can overlap the textures a little (say 0.25 inches) you can use the transparency tool just on that overlap part to fade the edge to zero transparency.

Not sure if you wanted to get rid of the seam totally or just reduce it, if just to reduce it the above should be enough

I have attached a screenshot where I also remove the shadow effect and slightly lightened the darker layer so the seam blended in better, almost eliminating it altogether (with a little more work you could probably eliminate it totally)

 

[firstdefence]

To my mind you've made this overly complicated.

A much simpler approach would be to have a rectangle with a seamless concrete texture as a fill, then apply a soft black to white or dark grey to light grey gradient with  and set its opacity until it suits your taste.

 

[Guest]

Hello dhb,

I tried with a single rectangle on which I drew a fine black line to which I applied a Gaussian blur. Adjusting the Gaussian fuzzy value makes the "separation" appear more or less.

[gdenby]

Hi, dhb,

My complicated solution. I tend to work that way. Lets hear it for fuss and bother.

I noticed a couple of things in your file, and wonder why. The two rectangles have different gradients, and at the adjoining overlapping edges, they have different grey values. Seems like there is no way they could not have a noticeable edge. The texture images has different values as a result. The banding seems to be worse w. the shadow fx turned on. Probably not the thing to do. Also, the rectangles, having straight edges, create a sharp line wherever there is a difference in the texture image. 

Attached is a file where I tried something different. In stead of having a gradient fill, w. a child image layer, I saved off the concrete texture, and used that as a bitmap fill. That way it could be reshaped as needed for variety, and the rectangle could have transparency applied to it, causing more variation if you need bands. I made the rectangles curves so I could roughen edges. Also added another layer of curves to obscure the seams more.

SHARP_EDGE.afdesign

 

 

[dhb]

Thanks all for your input on this.  All your solutions are better than the approach I was taking - sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees.  I'm new to AD but so far it's proving to be one of the best & intuitive tools I ever worked with.  Unfortunately that means the only limiting factor is my own ability.

I'll experiment more with your suggestions, many thanks again.