Inspiring

Question

what method remove colour fringe copying cutout to another image ?

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
January 10, 2026
2 replies
247 views

Hi,

I am masking around scale model of aircraft, mask around it, matching the soft edge by counting pixel fadeout and ensuring brush quickmask matches feather steps.

copy the item out to another image, a runway, it takes with it the background in that feather edge. I need that to be a fadeout of just the item, not show the background as a colour fringe.

so if behind the yellow propeller tip was some chap in a blue t shirt, I dont want to see blue in the edge fringe of the yellow prop tip or the black blade, or the green camouflaged fuselage.

If I was putting this into a blue background then it wouldnt matter, but into a real scene, I see blue edges to tyres against a concrete runway !

Extensis decades ago had a masking set for pshop that avoided such colour fringes.

What has Pshop 2025 as having gone from CS6 to subs each month and Pshop 2025, I am hoping Pshop has 'come of age by now'.

So far I am of mixed impressions.

Doing basic stuff and needing to now solve this.

Merlin

Windows

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

If you really need to fix a coloured fringe, then a Hue/Sat adjustment layer will usually do the job.

I added a green stroke all round the aircraft. I then added a Hue/Sat layer, and selected Green.

I simply reduced saturation to make the green disappear. (I filled half of the mask with black so you could see a before and after.

image.png

This is how it would look if I used Harmonize to fit the aircraft to the runway background.

You get three options to choose from. You can see that Photoshop has added shadows and changed the lighting.

image.png

Option 2

image.png

Option 3

image.png

M

Merlin3Author

Inspiring

Hi,
see attached psd file.
As the fringes vary in colour depending on what the colour was around that part of the model, chap in blue t shirt or red cloth or yellow logo on a shirt etc, adding a hue sat adj layer sees the colour taken out of the model not just the edge.
I attach a .psd file cropped as a portion of the current task , not one I would choose for realism cos the figures are a giveaway, a not so serious project compared to some I do, but it needed something better than Mr T shirt !!!! so I grab a real foliage scene etc, far better now, but see arrowed parts, different colour fringes, yellow on propeller edge, blue on refueller arm, darker edges on fuselage, they need removing, especially in my serious projects where result is realism, they say this pic doesnt belong, false. For the most part, I have defringed by reducing the edges with eraser but thats biting into the actual model. I dont like shrinking it, I cannot do that on a thin whip aerial or prop tip. or the boom from the refueller, see the yellow prop tip for example.
turn on the white 'show up layer' and A and B also need defringing.
Side tracking for a mo, I also need to remove the pink table cloth influence on the stbd wing tip uside ! for that the colour mixer sliders are good, but they are in raw mode, I need to find them in normal photoshop to use on that area, wherever they may be. (Do they in fact exist ?)
So having tried the hue sat adj layer and ended up altering the colours in the model, I need a means of removing colours in the fringe only.
Hope this shows what I am doing, the background will vary in colours, some dark, some light, its in a room with all sorts going on behind it !

Merlin

Lancaster_ZN-Y_Admiral_Prune_Pshop_forum.zip

davescm

Community Expert

Hi,
The forum software currently does not let us preview attachments. However, you may find the following useful.

To remove colour fringing from a layer that is masked (or cut out with transparency) clip a new layer to that masked layer* and change that new layer's blending mode to 'color'. Then select a soft brush and use Alt+click to pick up colour around the edges and paint onto the new layer. The colour blend mode will ensure it only affects the colour rather than the brightness and being clipped to the masked layer prevents painting outside of the subject.

*To clip a new layer to a masked layer, add a new layer above the masked layer and then Alt+Click on the border between the two in the layers panel. A small arrow will appear on the upper layer's thumbnail indicating that the upper layer is clipped to the lower layer.

Dave

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

I am not sure what you mean by 'counting pixel fade out'

I am also wondering whjy you have aplied a feather to the selection or mask, as that will almost certainly result in background colours being visible.

Typically, with current versions you would use 'Remove Background' to select the aircraft and give it a layer mask. It's important to have the mask as it gives you some control when you composite the layer onto a new background.

I also wonder if the recent Harmonize tool would give you a more convincing end result. I am not sure if it would fix the coloured fringe, but you need to rethink your workflow to avoid having the fringe.

If you can show us a screen shot or two, then we might be better placed to give more specific help.

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