Feathered selection without creating transparent gaps

[peterolph]

Hi

I'm trying to do some basic photo modification but I'm hitting this problem with the "Feather edges" option for the select tools where it's leaving transparent gaps. What I'm doing is:

1. Use the free select tool with feather edges turned on to select a foreground object from a photo
   
2. Cut and paste the selection to a new layer, leaving a transparent hole in the original
   

In my head, if both layers (foreground and background) are displayed, the result should look exactly like the original, the feathered edge of the selection fading into the feathered edge of the remainder exactly. But what actually happens is a little border of partially transparent pixels appears like this:



The original picture here was just a plain green test square that I selected a rectangle out of.

What am I doing wrong?

[david]

If you copy and paste your selection to a new layer, leaving the base layer complete, you will have no transparent pixels.
The problem arises because you are feathering transparent pixels from the "hole" in your lower layer.

[PixLab]

(09-20-2021, 02:25 PM)peterolph Wrote: In my head, if both layers (foreground and background) are displayed, the result should look exactly like the original, the feathered edge of the selection fading into the feathered edge of the remainder exactly. But what actually happens is a little border of partially transparent pixels appears like this:

What am I doing wrong?

No worries, you are doing nothing wrong, and your way of thinking is absolutely normal.
Speaking about "normal" both your layers are in "normal" mode (yeah an easy pun, sorry), to not have the feathered semi transparent when you've cut/past, you need to "merge" those layer...
> put the pasted layer in mode "Merge"

   

Now if you put the cut/pasted layer in "Dodge" mode you can see the "true" extend of your selection as feathering goes beyond the selection

[peterolph]

Amazing, thanks PixLab!