Digital BW, The Print

I often do the same thing, but use levels rather than curves.  I sometimes
also make the selection, save it as a layer, and check multiply.  Further
adjust using Opacity.

STEPHEN    JENNINGS
    P h o t o g r a p h e r
       Cambridge, MA
sgjennin@...
www.stephenjennings.com

> Perhaps some of you can help with a PS problem that I've been
> trying to solve.
> 
> I prefer to regularly feather corners/edges on practically all of my
> photos. I've been selecting with either a rectangular or oval
> selection, inverse, apply a 250 feather and repeat with another
> 100-150 feather and finally a curves adjustment layer.
> 
> This works fine most of the time but whenever I have open,
> evenly illuminated areas, i.e. blank sky, calm water, I get a slight
> to horrendous posterization. It's very subtle on the monitor but
> evident on the output. I've tried combining two different selections
> to acheive a blended feather but that's not competely effective
> either. I've tried a burn/dodge layer mask/soft light/50% but the
> 999 pixel diameter brush just isn't big enough resulting in
> uneven burns. 
> 
> I'm scanning at 16 bit then to 8 bit and 70-90MB files.
> 
> Any other ideas??
> 
> Thanks - R Murai