Soften/Blur picture edges

[Gohanto]

Hi, currently I'm working on an effect of static pictures moving in front of a video clip. The difficulty I'm running into it that the edges of the photos are so sharp that it just looks really cheap to me.

Does anyone know how I would evenly blur or soften the edges of the photos to make for a smoother transition?

 

[TimothyJinx]

In PaintShop Pro you can feather a selection. After you make a selection using the selection tool, Select Selections\Modify\Feather and you can specify the amount of feathering to apply to the selection. You can then copy and paste the selection onto another background or whatever.

Hope this helps.

 

[Matt Grunau]

You could use two layers with the same pic on each, blur the lower layer, and then use a mask on the upper layer (with a feather if needed) to "reveal" the layer under it. You would have a nice transition between the two that way, with the right amount of feather on the mask.

You could also use an adjustment layer with a blur and mask on that, and by inverting the mask, you could accomplish pretty much the same thing.

 

[Steve_Arm]

Auto trace layer, feather the created mask, expand it with negative values.