Feather
Unlike the Feather option in the selection tools, this version affects only the selection that's currently active; it has no effect on future selections. You can't reduce the amount of feathering with this command once it's applied. Therefore, if you apply it once with a setting of 10 and then try it again on the same selection using a setting of 5, it will simply increase the amount again. It's just like blurring an image—each time you blur the image, it becomes more and more blurry.
I prefer using this command instead of entering Feather settings directly into the tool's options bar (where they affect all “new” selections). If you enter these values directly, you might not remember that the setting is turned on days later, when you spend hours trying to select an intricate object. By leaving the tools set at 0, you can quickly press Option-Command-D (Mac) or Alt-Ctrl-D (Windows) to bring up the Feather dialog box and enter a number to feather the selection. Because this affects only the current selection, it can't mess up any future ones (Figures 2.64 and 2.65).
Figure 2.64. A coin pasted with a normal selection. (©2005 PhotoSpin, www.photospin.com)
Figure 2.65. A coin copied using a feathered selection and then pasted into this document.
The problem with the Feather command is that there is no way to tell if a selection is feathered by just looking at the marching ants. Not only that, but most people think the marching ants indicate where the edge of a selection is, and that's simply not the case with a feathered selection. If you take a look at Figure 2.66, you'll find that the marching ants actually indicate where a feathered selection is halfway faded out.
Figure 2.66. The left half of this split image shows where the selection would start to fade out and blend with the underlying image. The right half shows where the selection would stop affecting the image. Notice that the marching ants show up halfway between those two areas.
