White Border

So I pretty much have alpha channels down pat except for one thing...that darn white border that shows up around the edges of the image. Someone told me how to do this once and I forget how. Any help would be greatly apperciated!

Thanks in advance.
Stormy

Make sure your background layer is a similar color to the edges of your texture. The halo is usually caused by the edges being anti-aliased against a white background.

As Chip said, it's flattening the image against white that does it, and to avoid it all you need to do is flatten it against the colors in the image, not against white.

I've recently found a really cool free plug in from Flaming Pear that's designed to take care of this. It's here if you are interested. Just scroll down to "Free Plugins" and click the download link.

You'll get a bunch of them, and in the package are three called Solidify (A, B and C.) They will take your image and extrapolate the colors in the edge pixels, like this.



Takes care of the problem nicely, in a single mouseclick.

There are a couple in there to make textures wrap onto spheres, too, but I haven't had a chance to run any experiments on them yet. (Too busy with my day job, at the moment.) But Flaming Pear has some great plugins, if you like that sort of thing. (I admit, I really do. )

Hope this helps!

Great find, Robin!

Thanks, Chip!

Thanks for the help everyone! Off to try those plugin's. Im always looking for new photoshop plugins and paint brushes.

Edit: Plugins hate me lol. I cant get them to work!
I installed them into the plugin folder per the directions that came with them and nothing. Im probably doing one little thing wrong that I am to tired to see.

I guess I have to do it the old fashioned way like Chip mentioned.

Hi Stormy!

Did you quit and restart Photoshop? It won't see new plug-ins until it's been restarted.

Other than that, all you have to do is drop the whole Flaming Pear Freebies folder into your Plug-Ins folder. (You can even leave the guides and things in there, so they don't get lost. ) They should show up as a new category, Flaming Pear, in your Filter menu.

I've never had any trouble with the filters from Flaming Pear.

If you tried quitting and restarting, and that doesn't do it, please let me know, I have a Photoshop action on my site that will do approximately the same thing, but takes more work to use.

Yep did all of that, even restarted the computer and it still didnt work.

Thanks for the great find, Robin. There's some useful stuff in that package.

Stormy, sorry to hear you're having problems. Here's exactly what I did to install the plug-ins. They're working fine for me, so hopefully this step-by-step instruction will help you (assuming you're using Windows).

1. Download the freebies.zip file. Be careful to select the right file, by the way. There are 3 of them on the page. If you're using Windows, you want the one all the way at the right.

2. After you've downloaded the zip file, unzip it to a new folder called Flaming Pear Freebies.

3. Open up My Computer and then navigate to your Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS\Plug-Ins folder.

4. Make sure Photoshop is not running at this point. Drag the Flaming Pear Freebies folder into the Plug-Ins folder.

5. Start Photoshop. In the Filters Menu, you should now have a new category called Flaming Pear. All your new plug-ins should be there.

Yeah I am using windows. I have no clue why it wont work. I did everything like you said. Guess I will just do it the other way, with what I am making now it is not to hard because each area is only one shade of color. So until I get that working it wont be to bad.

Please check out this thread /109/8b/48537/1.html -- I never really had issues with alpha channels other than learning them, but this helped me to no end.

Stormy, I'm sorry that they're not working. I'd write to Flaming Pear, and see if there's a known issue or something. As I said, I've never had any problems with any of their stuff.

In the meantime, if you go here I have a Quicktime movie that shows how I take care of the white halos, and there's a link to a Photoshop Action that does much the same thing as the filters.

The only real difference is that it has to be run on a duplicate layer, that's below the layer with the image on it, since it works by using a Gaussian Blur to spread out the edge pixels, and then duplicates and merges the layer multiple times to make the blur "solid."

Anyway, it's better than nothing, I guess.

Yeah, Chosen, I'm quite fond of Flaming Pear. They do good stuff.

Robin, thanks for the link/info on the solidify action. I'm like chip and just use a blank background layer of the base color, but for multi colored stuff this is great! I've done something similar by hand! You just saved me about 15 minutes per multi-colored item!!! Your check is in the mail!

Thanks Robin! I did it the way you did in the video without the action that you provided and it worked great!! Finaly no more halo...now where are my horns? lol.

ROFL! Thanks, Blaze! I'll be expecting it.

Cool Stormy! All the Action does it automate the "duplicate layer & merge" steps, so you can just click the "play" button instead of doing "Command/ctrl+J, Command/ctrl+E" over and over.

Wow... finally the white halo effect is gone. Your tutorials Robin are wonderful. I am very new to photoshop and am so loving learning it. Thank you all for your tidbits of wisdom

You are most welcome, Aphrodite!

I've been wondering for some time.... would you guys be interested in a thread that was just Photoshop Tips & Tricks? Not attached to any particular question, just things that make working in Photoshop a little easier, like how to use the Burn and Dodge tools on a layer so you don't harm the pixels of your original image, or how to do "step and repeat," or a whole host of keyboard shortcuts, or other stuff like that?

I've tried to slip them into stuff here and there, but if they're not germane to the question asked, they tend to be ignored, so I was wondering.

Let me know, if you do, and I'll start one.

I would please Robin!

I know my way around PS moderately well, but there's loads I've learnt from your tips and tricks that you've posted.

I for one would love a tips and tricks section on photoshop. I think it would also cut down on alot of the repeative questions in the forum.

OHHHH ... Yes please... for those of us new to it. That would be so wonderful.

Okay, I'll do it.

I don't think it will cut down on the repetitive questions, though, Stormy, because the thing about the repetitive questions is that the questioners clearly don't look at other threads before they post. If they did, they'd find the answers, and not repeat the questions.

It might or it might not. I guess there is only o ne way to find out

ROFL! I guess there is.

Just one quick tip for those white edges, when cutting and pasting images of clothes. FEATHERING!! The most wonderful tool in the world, : ) It will get rid of all those white edges and give a softer, cleaner edge to the cut.

PS: I use gimp and coral so i'm not sure if Photoshop has a feather selection.

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