This tutorial was previously posted on hunnybeedesign.com and written many years ago
I am posting the following tut with the steps of how I now do it as I (as usual lol) tend to go my own way…for most of the settings you can fiddle around with them until you get the outcome you desire, this is just a basic outline of a simple smooth edges tut 🙂
My tut was written and screenshot in CS3, I suppose it will be similar steps for most version of PS but cannot say for sure, not having used any other version lol
Make sure your image is selected, then contract the selection by 2 pixels (sometimes you can get away with contracting by just a single pixel)
Click on Channels tab, then Create New Channel
Now you’ll see the image entirely black with the selection active…Edit>>Fill>>Choose White
Deselect
Filter>>Blur>>Gausian Blur
Use between 2-3 or thereabouts here, mine is on 3.1
Image>>Adjustments>>Levels
Bring the end point sliders in towards the center till you are happy you have a smooth edge, click Ok
Down on the Channels Tab, click Load Channel as Selection
Click on your Layers Tab, add new layer
Keep selection active and flood fill with black
Deselect and move layer under your original image, clip the original image to your new smooth layer (Create Clipping Mask)
Merge Visible and there you have it…(hopefully lol) a nice smooth graphic 🙂
With some graphics when you do this process it can smooth out/remove areas you don’t want removed, in this example you can see that the inner points of the flower where it almost meets into the middle have been smoothed to a rounded look, in most cases it doesn’t take much to fix this, clone brush, new flood fill layer with a color matching your original piece, etc…just play around until you are both satisfied with the overall look and the quality of the piece.
