Zany Zeus

Only recently have I started to shoot isolated images on white. Quite frankly I had no idea what I was missing. I love it. Too bad so many inspectors don't feel the same about my images as I do. The single biggest area of complaint is in the transition from subject to white. All sorts of things fall apart in this area but the chief complaint is poor isolation and ragged edges. Now I honestly believe that the image should be left alone and properly dealt with by the end user. Especially if they plan on cutting the image out and laying it on a background. But that's not my job; I have to get the images past the inspectors and into view of those buyers. I'd like to share my quick and painless method for smoothening the edges. 

You can see the area I'm working on in the above image.

I wrote a simple PS Action to deal with this. 

1. Select the Magic Wand tool with a tolerance of 10 to 20.
2. Click out all the white areas. Use Shift Click to add extra areas.
3. Click Create Action and name it.
4. Go to the Paths and click the icon for Make Work Path From Selection.
5. Press R or select the Blur tool. I used a brush size of 4 pixels but it depends on the amount of effect you want. Experiment. Strength 80-100%.
6. In Paths. Click Stroke Path With Brush.
7. Drag the Work Path to the Trash.
8. Stop Recording.

The image on the left had the blur action run on it, while the right is the original.

Now each time you want to dull down jagged edges just select the white area with a Magic Wand Tool and run this action. Simple and effective. My rejection rate for poor isolations are near zero now. 

However having used isolated images for insertion into backgrounds I find it easier if the edges were left jagged. I get a cleaner, easier to deal with cut. I then smooth the edge AFTER the cut. Which, in my opinion makes the procedure counterproductive. But what can you do? I can't sell images unless they get to the buyers screen.

I hope this procedure helps.

Peter