Stroke in Photoshop

[KevDogg]

When I apply a stroke in photoshop around the Character its very lumpy all the way around.    Is there a way to make the stroke smooth?

[kglad]

<moved from cc desktop >

[Trevor.Dennis]

Can you give us the cat image without the stroke please? We'll have better idea on how to fix it then

[Trevor.Dennis]

Leave the image at its full resolution, and paste it here useing the forum add image widget. Thanks

[KevDogg]

[Trevor.Dennis]

Thanks.

Can you tell us where the image came from and in what form?

Did it originally have the black background?

Did you remove the background by selecting it with the magic wand?

I have a feeling that is what is happening here, because if that was the case, the outline would not have been smooth and clean.  If you can give us that information, we can tell you how to fix it.

[Trevor.Dennis]

BTW  If it happens to be a PNG with transparent background, that would be perfect.  If you are not sure, can you give us a link to the source file?  Thanks

[KevDogg]

A tattoo guy drawed this for my friend and he sent me the pic to do some stuff with in photoshop like add a small white outline around the character.  It originally came with a white background so I deleted the white background by the color of pixels because I figured that would be easier than magic wand or auto detect select subject.  Then I was able to make a selection and mask out the subject that way.  I can Post the character with transparent background if needed

[KevDogg]

I just added a little bit of feather to the mask and it smoothed the stroke out a lot

[Trevor.Dennis]

Yes,, feather would hhave helped, but you'd lose some definition like the fine detail in the whiskers.

It's possible to use Outer Glow instead of Stroke, and carefully control the settings to get a tiny bit of feather.

Bottom line is that the select was not clean, and any errant pixels on the outline were being amplified by the Stroke.

The only way to get a completely clean selection of this sort of object with the Pen tool

If you save the attached file 'Cat with Clipping Path' and open in Photoshop, you should see the clipping path in the Paths panel.

[KevDogg]

Thanks you very much.  I feel like I definitly learned something from this.  I appreciate it.